Once upon a house...

Once upon a time, a daddy built his girls a dollhouse. It was a very nice dollhouse, solidly built, with 8 rooms and a staircase. It had a front door and a garage door and a nice little patio. The house was lovingly painted in bright colors left over from building the real house.

The dollhouse was played with often and was very happy.



Years went by as the 3 girls grew. 2 more girls were added and all 5 of them had played with this house. The girls painted the house new colors. Some of the floors started to give way but were temporarily replaced with cardboard. They painted it again. And again. The garage door became stuck with layers of paint. The front door was lost and a replacement was stapled in place. Part of the roof came off, and only a hinge was left to remember where it had once been. It was painted again.



More years went by and all of the girls were grown and gone. The house was moved to a storage area and forgotten. For several years the rains came and often soaked things not well protected in storage and the wood of the house swelled with water. It remained there for some time, lonely and forgotten.

Then one day the daddy was cleaning some things from storage and recalled that there was this house on the back porch. He offered it to one of his girls, who snatched it right up.



She took the dollhouse home with fond memories of playtimes past. The poor waterlogged thing was in a very sorry state indeed. Not really knowing how to work with wood or do many things handy she asked the hardware store and they sold her some paint stripper and a scraper. The paint stripper was poured on and she got to work taking away the gum it made but the poor little house wasn't looking much better. All of the water had done a lot of damage and she felt overwhelmed trying to fix it.

So the poor little house went back into the garage and there it stayed again. For 13 years the girl took the house with her everytime she moved. And every time, the house was stuck in some corner of a garage and forgotten again.



The girls had girls of their own but instead of the old fixer upper their dolls recieved move-in ready houses. The dollhouse was again forgotten and sad.



And then, one day, after those 13 long years since someone tried to last fix the house, the girl realized that she now knew a little about how to work with wood and tools. She now had some knowledge of paint. And she pulled the poor little dollhouse out and gave it another go.

Today we began sanding and I think maybe she can be saved. A little sandpaper, a little wood filler and a lot of elbow grease will be needed. But I think we can do it.



Erin said she likes the paint job after the sanding and would like to keep it that way. I think we need to paint it again but that blue if kinda pretty...