Once upon a doll house

Sierra and I have been searching for a doll house. We have dreamed up a little project to make with one and today we found it!

This baby is perfect! You may look at it and say "Oh My" but we look at it with a vision for the future. This little baby is going to be transformed into a Littlest Pet Shop mansion. It may be old and ugly looking right now but over the next couple of weeks we will perform a complete renovation.

We will be learning about renovations and structural engineering, and the tools needed to perform the renos. We will be learning about interior decorating and remodelling; learning about complimentary colours and contrasting colours on the colour wheel (what colours work good together). We will be discussing options, researching ideas, making choices, and budgeting for renovation costs. We will be learning about painting and sewing and we will be doing all of this while working together as a family.

Today we started by removing all the carpet and wall paper. We discovered a hole in the floor which is perfect as we wanted to add a staircase anyway.

Then we sanded the floors a bit to remove the excess fluff.

We removed a couple walls. The bathroom wall we removed (pictured below) will be shifted over to the window on the left to enlarge the bathroom.

We removed the wall on the bottom floor too so there will be an open concept floor plan for the kitchen and living area. We will reuse that wall upstairs to complete the partial wall to the bedroom shown below. A door will be added to pass through. Sierra is doing a lot of the work herself.

Tomorrow we hope to remove the pink door (pictured above in bottom left) with daddy's help. This door is part of the wall and doesn't open right now. It will be opened up and hinges added so it becomes usable. Daddy will also reinstall the bedroom wall with it's new doorway and cut a hole for a second staircase to the 3rd floor. Then we will start to paint the window frames, pick out wall coverings and floor finishings.

It's only the first day but we are having a lot of fun with it so far and what I love the most is it is a great family project we can all work on together.