The Beginning

Welcome to The Dollhouse Project.  This little corner of the internet is mostly just for me to document the project, so I apologize in advance to anyone who may be reading along and gets confused by an inside joke.  I also hope I don't offend anyone with anything I say.  But knowing me, it will happen.  So I'm sorry for offending you!  You know, in the future. 

The background: A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away...

Wait, wrong background.  A somewhat less long-time-ago, in Iowa, Grandpa Walt built me a dollhouse.  The year was 1983 and I was 6 years old.  There was a Christmas blizzard so I didn't even get my dollhouse to my real house for a few days because of the weather (I don't remember that part, Grandpa just told me on the phone the other day)  Grandpa doesn't remember for sure where he got the kit, he just had seen it and thought he'd try his hand at putting it together.  And he succeeded! 

I have no idea if any pictures remain of it from its earlier days.  I'm pretty sure Mom has some somewhere in her massive photo collection, but I braved that pile once and am not in any mood to do it again.  Trust me, it doesn't look much different today than it did when it was new!  (the dollhouse, not the photo pile... that thing is just out of control!)  For the last 20+ years my dollhouse has been tucked away in the back room of Mom and Dad's basement, mostly acting as a halfway house for wayward spiders (eew!) and it is still a beautiful dollhouse

But a closer inspection will reveal that Father Time has taken a bit of a toll on it.  Nothing serious, mostly just hot glue getting crusty and falling apart.  My project is to fix it up.

Want to know how I know when the dollhouse was put together and who did it?

I apologize for the freaky pink hand on the left and the orange hue of the wood.  I tried to Photoshop the heck out of this picture to make the writing show up better.  It is plenty visible in real life.  Anyway, it says "WHL 1983" on the underside of the cover over the porch swing. 

Coming soon, that closer inspection of the many broken things.