Which Dollhouse?

A note on selecting a dollhouse: start small! It's really tempting to, with your first or second house, set out to achieve all your construction and decorating fantasies. Finally, a chance to have that victorian parlor you've always wanted, install that really pretty wainscotting you've been saving, build a cute little window seat! You know what you're doing, after all, you have a number of room boxes under your belt. No! Stop! Intuitively, it might seem true that a 10 room dollhouse is really just 10 room boxes stuck together. It isn't. A dollhouse, even a small dollhouse, takes a LOT more work--and money--than you think. Things go wrong in any craft project, and in a dollhouse, those things can multiply exponentially--very quickly.

You're going to lay down flooring wrong, end up with inexplicable bubbles in your wallpaper, try a few new techniques that backfire horribly. A dollhouse can be, among other things, a huge money pit--and even worse than having to lay that pretty flooring you love so much twice is having to pay another 45 bucks for it. Pretty soon, you're stuck with a half finished dollhouse.

Trust me, I know--and if you think I'm the only one with a few half finished dollhouses under her belt, check eBay. A small dollhouse only seems boring until you take it out of the box and start to actually try to put it together--and start to freak out!