My Daughter's Red Dollhouse

In April, my daughter, not yet four years old, saw a red dollhouse on display at a craft store, and decided that is what she wanted to ask Santa for.

No. We were not getting a dollhouse. We live in a tiny apartment. The kit for the "red" dollhouse was too expensive. And, working full time, I couldn't imagine when I would be able to put one together.

When I voiced these things to my mom, she said that she had a coupon and that she would put the house together. With two out of three problems solved, I bought the largest, most complicated kit the store sells.

My mom is an artist and my stepdad builds Arts and Crafts style furniture, and both are perfectionists. They spent more than one hundred hours building this...

The dollhouse comes with shingles that are supposed to be applied one. at. a. time. So my stepdad came up with the idea of doing a plank roof and a copper turret. 

My mom insisted that a copper turret necessitated copper rivets, which she simulated with 1/8 inch copper brads. 

She drilled holes in the turret. Then she applied super glue around a hole, inserted a brad into the hole {using tweezers}, and used the flat end of a shish kebab skewer to press the brad against the turret to glue it in place...112 times.

My stepdad thought the front steps were too narrow, so he built better ones. Of course.

Clearly, I hired the right construction crew. ;)