Dollhouse Project

Last fall my husband was browsing his favorite woodworking site and stumbled up on some very nice dollhouse kits, the kind with about 2 gazillion pieces that have to be painted and assembled, OK maybe I'm exaggerating a bit...  Anyway, he decided it would be a great project for the winter and ordered one. 

He and my son started it late fall and got the "guts" of the house put together.  Then we started working on Christmas projects and the dollhouse was set aside. 

Somewhere along the way, it was decided the dollhouse should be one of our nieces (and eventually her younger sister), since my husband had been making wooden trucks the last few years for the nephews.  That gave us a deadline -- mid-May.

For about the last month or so, the dollhouse has been our family project, several weekends, quite a few evenings, just barely getting done before the birthday party last weekend.  (OK I admit we skipped some details because there just wasn't time).  Since it was such a big family undertaking I wanted to share some pictures of the process here (and celebrate that it got done).

These pictures were from the first weekend of work on the dollhouse when we started back on the project in April.  Our son loved that there was almost always a painting job that he could do :)

More progress, a little at a time.  Eventually the house had siding added, roof, shingles, shutters and lots of other fun details.  I even made some furniture for some of the rooms.

Before we gave the dollhouse to the birthday girl, our son tested it out with his army guys.  He had so much fun trying out the furniture, especially the pillows I'd made for the beds.  His army guys apparently like to have pillow fights.

 

 

It was a big hit with the birthday girl (and most of the kids that day).