Back when we took Abby to see Santa, she told Santa she wanted trains. She really only said this because that's what Noah was saying. We knew that trains wouldn't cut it, but she wouldn't give us anything else to go on.
Somewhere around a week into December, she told us that she wanted a dollhouse. Hmmm. Not quite the amount of warning I wanted. I had always imagined myself building Abby's dollhouse. The way I saw it, this is my only chance to build Abby's dollhouse....EVER. So, why shouldn't I? (the fact that I had less than three weeks is a good answer to that question). Nonetheless, I started on my research. There were really three main options:
1. Build from scratch
2. Build from a kit
3. Get a premade one that only takes a couple hours to put together.
I strongly considered building from scratch. So, I spent a couple days researching that. Then, my "don't-be-an-idiot" gene took over and told me that was not a viable option. That left me with premade or kit. I settled on a kit (seemed like a good idea at the time). I found a nice one at Hobby Lobby. They had it already built. It really didn't look that complicated. You could buy the kit for $80 or have them build it for you for around $450. If you know me, you know which route I took. Looking back, the huge increase in price for a built one should have been an indication of what was involved.
So, I got the box home. It was heavy, but not that large. How bad could it be?
I put off starting for a few more days, simply because I had an idea as to what was ahead. I didn't want to start for fear of what I would find. I finally opened the box around the 14th of December. And I almost crapped my pants. The parts list was amazing. To give you an idea, there were 850 individual shingles. I started getting scared. Could this really be the same thing I saw assembled in the store?
I spent a couple more days organizing the parts before starting. Then I started assembly. I spent about a week, every night on the dollhouse. The weekends I spent almost all day. I had put the project in the basement (to keep it hidden from Abby) in front of the big screen. So at least I could watch Netflix.
The worst part was the painting. Nearly everything had to be painted. At least 75% of the time on this project was devoted to painting and sanding. Everything I painted needed at least two coats. Much of what I painted needed 3-4 coats. The purple color needed FIVE coats to cover fully.
Sealing the floors with polyurethane:
Reading the insanely large instruction book. Luckily, the directions were written out fairly well.
Assembly required lots of tape, glue, weights, and often holding pieces in place until they dried. Attaching the front.
As Christmas came closer, it was clear I was not going to finish. If I was just assembling (and not painting), I could have had it done. I really didn't think the painting would take as long as it did. This next picture was taken on December 23rd at 12:03AM. Yeah, that's where I was with TWO DAYS TO GO! This was the night I pulled an all-nighter....well almost. I worked until 4:00AM. Peggy was working, and I had to get up with the kids (around 6AM) in the morning. I figured I should at least get 2 hours of sleep. This was already my third late night. The previous two I had stayed up until around 2AM.
Because Peggy was working, I did get a bit of a break on the morning of the 23rd. When she got home though, it was straight back to work. Abby kept asking what I was doing in the basement. We told her I was "working on a project." She had even picked out the paint colors with Peggy a couple weeks before. She didn't know what they were for.
These are the windows. Don't much look like windows, do they? Yeah, that's because they had to be individually assembled, glued, and painted! All 16 (each window has an inside and outside) of them....
The railings had to be individually painted. The box says that a "feature" of this dollhouse is that these were already constructed (same for the front door). What they fail to mention is that pre assembly makes it MUCH more difficult to paint. To give you an idea, I spent somewhere around 4 hours just painting these. The front door took me another 3 hours.
December 24th, 12:58AM:
Starting to look like something! December 24th, 11:24PM
I called it around 1AM on Christmas morning. Peggy had stayed up with me that night to help out with some of the painting. I just coudn't stay up any later. There was nothing I could have added quickly that would have made any difference. This is the state of it when Abby got it on Christmas morning. I was expecting a HUGE reaction. She was happy, but not quite what I was expecting. She acted as though it was a foregone conclusion that she was going to get a dollhouse. Plus, it wasn't very "fancy" yet.
So, how do you explain to a 4 year old that Santa didn't finish her dollhouse? We told her that Santa didn't have time to finish it and asked daddy to help him out. So, we let her play with it for a day before lugging it back downstairs. We gave her all the furniture and stuff for the inside. She was sad to see it go, but excited that I was soon going to make it "fancy."
I would guess in total this project took somewhere around 150 hours. Yeah, crazy. Probably a large part of that is that I'm somewhat of a perfectionist. But, if she's going to have this thing for many many years to come (and she WILL have this thing for many many years to come :-), then I just wanted it to be done right.
I spent another two weeks finishing it. At least this time Abby could check in and see the progress. She was pretty patient waiting for it to be done. When it was time for shingles, I finally moved it out of the basement and into the living room.
Shingling. I ended up getting really good at it. With all of the angles and windows, there were a lot of pieces to cut. I finished the shingles in just a couple of days.
Putting on the LAST piece! Yahoo!
Finally getting the dollhouse to its new home: Abby's room.
Some of the "fancy" details:
Most of the furniture on the inside.
She's already played with it a LOT over the last couple of days. Here's to hoping she uses it for years to come.
