I also learned to make furniture for my house and I had a blast with that thing for years! so much fun, in fact, that when I was in 7th grade, I saved up all my babysitting money and bought another house. The new one was also unfinished wood but it was fancier than the original because it had a stairway inside and doors to close the whole thing up. For several years, all my income (babysitting) went to buying fancier furniture and accessories for my houses.
Then I grew up, got married and started saving my money for real furniture and household items. The houses were emptied, the furniture all carefully boxed up and stored. I sold the first house at a garage sale, emptied of most of the furniture, about 25 years ago. The other, fancier house has sat, neglected, in a corner of my office, for decades. Life moved on, I had too many other things to do and I didn't give any of it a thought for decades.
But my daughter did.
"Hey Mom, you know what would be a fun project?" Katie said a couple of weeks ago. "Lets get out your dollhouse and decorate it for Christmas!"
So we are. I pulled it out of the corner in which it was stashed, dusted it inside and out and put a new coat of paint on it. The most love it had gotten since the mid 90s was when I let Josie slap paint all over it. She also stapled a few pictures on the bedroom walls but that's about it.
Katie and I carried it down to the living room and set it up on my antique radio table and took inventory. The first thing we did was let BoopityBoop put Christmas wreaths on all the windows. We spent the first day just unpacking all my old stuff and deciding what we'd use, how we'd decorate the house, etc. We made lists of what we thought we'd need. Katie had gotten the wreaths for the windows at a local hobby shop: they have adhesive backs so it was easy to stick one on each window. A little snow on the roof added to the holiday spirit.
This is the second of the two houses I owned and I never finished decorating this one. I put wainscoting and wallpaper on the two bedrooms but the downstairs is completely unfinished but for the stain on the floors. Miniatures is still a huge hobby and while the places I used to shop back in the 70s are gone, most hobby shops still have a section for doll house fans.
Katie had explained to BoopityBoop that even though it was a dollhouse, it's kind of a grown up toy the way we planned to use it. When I unwrapped my furniture, the girls understood. I still have a lot of the stuff I used to play with, so there was plenty for the girls to do while Katie and I planned our decorations. They took the furniture we let them play with and outfitted the radio table as a basement retreat in the house.
We all had so much fun going through my furniture and accessories that haven't seen the light of day since the 80s. A few things didn't survive storage: a couple of tables and chairs were missing legs and at least on glass candelabra had broken but most of it was still good or easily repaired. With a dab of hot glue and a pair of tiny wooden beads, we were able to replace the knobs on a tiny armoire.
We've got so much furniture, two houses worth, that we decided to skip the kitchen and do two living room/dining room set ups, one with a fireplace and one with the staircase. We packed up all the furniture again, except for the bits the twins were playing with and made a list of what supplies we'd need. Katie picked up some nifty Christmassy craft paper to use as wall paper. If I'd had elmer's spray on adhesive when I was a kid, I probably would have finished decorating this house in no time. It was a lot harder back in the 70s. We didn't even have glue sticks. I had never heard of a hot glue gun when I was 11.
Katie and I got the tiny bathroom wallpapered and most of the fixtures put in. She found some tiny round mirrors and we need to make frames for them. With life running at full speed, work and Holidays to contend with, we'll work on the house when we can.
BoopityBoop have their own dollhouse at home: big enough for Barbies. But now they understand that the house itself can be as much fun as playing with dolls in it. They went home and made this: