Nora's New House

Long before Nora's birthday we decided she would love a dollhouse. We mulled over several ideas everything from Kyle building one to buying one from a big box store. In the end I decided I really wanted to create a unique dollhouse for my little lady, but the reality was Kyle did not have time to build a dollhouse. So I turned to Craigslist to find a reasonably priced dollhouse that I could "renovate" myself. After searching for several months I came across this blank slate:

It was all wood and the perfect size, so it came home with us.

Then we proceeded to give this dollhouse a major renovation. Kyle made a set of stairs. I painted the outside and inside, added wallpaper, created some art, curtains and rugs. I purchased a few pieces of furniture and Nora received some furniture for her birthday then I painted the pieces to coordinate.

I really got into this project. One day while I was waiting for Kyle to finish the steps I even did some space planning for the entire house. Kyle jokes that he is not sure if this project was for Nora of myself :)

Here is the final result:

According to my plans the attic is a nursery/play room. The upstairs left room is a bathroom and the upstairs right room is a bedroom. The main level left room is a kitchen and the right room is the living room. It certainly still needs more furnishings but it turned out colorful and fun!

Now for some detail shots:

The bedroom complete with bunk beds, yellow mirror (used to be ugly gold color but I painted it), flower rug, pink chevron curtains, yellow clock. I even made some coordinating bedding using the fabric I used to wallpaper the living room.

The kitchen is pretty sparse, but I purchase a table and painted it yellow, made a valence curtain. The pictures in the house are all chalkboard ornaments. I cut off the hanging part of the ornament, painted and painted the frame. In the kitchen I left it a chalkboard. In the living room I printed off miniature pictures of art that actually hangs in our house and adhered the prints over the chalkboard. Perfect inexpensive way to create art for the mini house.

The living room with a rug, 2 pictures, and flower wallpaper (this fabric is what inspired the color scheme for the whole house), and stairs Kyle constructed.

The bathroom is also sparse but it features rainbow wallpaper, a Melissa and Doug bathtub I found I Goodwill and a red chair

The bright yellow nursery has a crib with blue chevron bedding I made and a toy box that I'm going to let Nora paint all by herself.

That's it for the tour of Nora's new house. I had so much fun creating it for my little lady and she loves it! It was also a lot more fun and less time consuming than renovating an actual house. Could I turn this into a career? Anyone need a designer for their child's doll house :)