Letting go

Up in the attic is a dollhouse.  Understand that "the attic" is the topmost living space, not a dusty lightless three-foot high space reached by a pull-down stair through a ceiling trapdoor (the definition in the house I grew up in), but a finished, though non-standard, area.

It's been long years since there was a daughter young enough to play with this dollhouse.  It remains because I made it myself, and I still think that's pretty cool.

Once long ago, there was a Relief Society special Saturday activity, where a brother brought materials and gave us instruction, and we built dollhouses out of the heaviest corrugated cardboard I'd ever seen.  Don went every year down to the port and gathered big sheets of shipping cardboard, and boxes, big huge things, and flattened them out.  He and a few of his buddies would cut and glue and paint and create dollhouses to give to one of the local children's charities--very cool.  On this occasion, he branched out for us.

The gymn floor was covered in protective layers of heavy cardboard, with each of us laying out a huge sheet and making sketches.  If you've ever made your own envelopes, it's the same idea:  the center dimensions first, with the four sections jutting out from it, so that when you cut the paper you can fold those sections into the center, left, bottom, right, to meet, and then the top flap will come down and overlap the other edges, and voila!  Envelope, custom-made for your valentine or homemade card.

(two stories' height in walls)

In this instance, whichever side would be the front would remain open.  He gave us choices as to how to make a roof, which would be cut separately.  Mine was peaked and removable; I did cut one side shorter than the other for the front, but it turned out to still be too much overhang; the girls would just take it off.  Actually, they could tilt it back and rest it on the peak, and that's how it was still sitting when I went upstairs to look at it this week--the tips of the peaks are now a little squashed.

I made it more or less on the four-square pattern of our house, though I was not about to attempt a dormer on the attic level.  (At the time, there was only one, on the front--later we would add two more and finish the attic, when our family grew.)

Don helped us figure out what would go where before we cut, then we carefully creased and bent the perpendicular lines to make walls.  He gave us Elmer's wood glue, helped us position the walls and hold them in position while someone wound yarn tightly around and around to hold them in place until the glue dried.  I made a floor to create a first and second story, and wedged that in with glue.  (It eventually started to give, so we cut a heavy cardboard cylinder to fit in as a center post--you can see that now.)  The removable roof I had to design and make separately.

one side bows a bit, after maybe 30 years

Paint on the inside and outside, wallpaper made out of a fabric leftover from a daughter's blouse I had sewn--I mixed Elmer's white glue and water, 50/50, to put it up...then lace trim on the windows.  I cut windows and a door so that they could be moved back and forth.

One of the girls had a toy loom, and the rugs are woven on that.  There are a couple of very small carpet scraps all the way into the back, which show up a little better here.

view of first story

 This was Christina's Christmas that year, and I'm not quite sure which year it was.  I think she was in kindergarten, maybe first grade.  Over the years, all the girls have played with it.

I kind of thought that it would go down to my grandchildren, but it is a little the worse for wear, and none of them are nearby; while it's not heavy, it is big, and shipping it isn't practical.  I have, however, found a home for it with a little girl in the ward who can get one more life out of it.  I can't keep it.

We have to clear out everything, because we have to sell the home where we have raised our family and lived for over thirty years.  Long-term  unemployment has finally run through all of our other options.