In the Dollhouse

My six-year-old sister longed for a dollhouse...

...but every single one in the shop was too small to be much fun...

...so we made our own. (I was fourteen when we started)

Built from milk cartons, one may have to suspend disbelief that there are no doors or windows or staircases. I imagine that they are on the cross-section of the room not shown in the structure.

The order is jumbled, and by some funny twist, the last room we made is the first in this order. My dream house must have a library. While this one is not encased in a secret tunnel, the very presence of two shelves stacked with books feeds my fancy. The most colourful to the eye and to the mind, from the walls to the shelves to the books. Squares of paper were painstakingly cut and a fancier piece stuck on top created each book in the shelf.

Our one-bedroom-for-the-parents-two-for-the-children inspired the three bedrooms pictured in the dollhouse. While individually the yellow room is my least favourite, the colour complements the otherwise darker shades.

I had my say with the library, now it was my sister's turn. Her passion at the time was swimming, so we created an entire swimming-pool room. And just to make sure the walls were not bland, made it resemble an aquarium.

A blue room (above) and a bathroom (below)

(the pink room seems to have disappeared...)

The first room to be made, and the first place where I experimented with the dangling lights

The fridge is even stocked with mini pies!

I have a bad feeling about the fire blazing on the stove without anyone to attend to it.

And finally, where they all eat (below). The chairs, of course, being the tables put in the centre of ordered-in pizzas.

There were plans to add a slanted roof and an attic and a pulley elevator, but that would require the boxes to be sealed together, making the entire dollhouse difficult to move around. The way it is now, each box can be moved individually and safely, and this also gives flexibility in the arrangement.

My sister was happy, and so I moved on to another project.