The First Remodel

Years passed and Jane married and had three daughters, Dee (me), Christy, and Missy. As a Christmas present sometime in the early 1970s, our Aunt Nancy, who had no children of her own, pulled the dollhouse out of storage, painted it inside and out, added pictures and mirrors on some of the walls, and even threw in some furniture, and then painted large flowers around the perimeter. She wrapped it up with a big bow and gifted it to us, the second generation.

 

We were thrilled and played with it for years and it stayed with us through several moves. Sometime in the mid-1970s, my mother decided to add some extras. For the first time, the dollhouse received door openings between the rooms in the house and wallpaper on all of the walls. She also added lights! That was so very impressive to us and it renewed our interest in the make-believe world of the dollhouse.

And, this is my favorite story of the dollhouse:

One night while mom and dad had company, my sisters and I were playing in the newly wired dollhouse. We had been warned to be quiet and not interrupt and we were happy to play in the dollhouse. All of a sudden, the dollhouse wiring sparked and the dollhouse started to smoke. As the oldest, I was the one who had to break the rules and interrupt my parents' visit, so I crept into the formal living room and walked up close to my mother and whispered, "Mom, the dollhouse is on fire." She screamed, jumped up, and ran into our room to unplug it. The dollhouse was only scorched, not destroyed, but it was never quite the same.

The condition before the remodel

Once again, the family dollhouse was placed into storage and came along on move after move, house after house. It "survived" the fire, a flood, poor storage conditions, and a few drops which broke a side wall and damaged the roof, but we hung onto it because we knew that someday we'd restore it for the next generation.