My mother used to buy dollhouse kits at antique stores and yard sales. When I was living in Arizona, I started a thing where I'd fly out for a 3- or 4-day visit just to build a dollhouse. This was the second one we did. It's built from an XL Machine "Petite Dreams Deluxe" kit, which is a mirror-image of the RGT Alison Jr. I believe it came with a lot of the trim already painted. Mom furnished it in a frontier style.
When Dad and I sold, gave away, and donated the very large quantity of dollhouses Mom had accumulated, I'd kept this one because it went with my bedroom, it offered a lot of space on a non-sprawling footprint, and I figured I'd have one 1:12 dollhouse to furnish with keepsake items I'd bought in Connecticut.
Then three things happened:
- Dad found me the kit for my grail house, the Walmer "Mulberry Lane."
- I kept trying and failing to furnish and decorate this house in my own style, and it always felt wrong.
- I started resenting this house and missing my IKEA wall shelf house.
When push comes to shove, I really only want one full 1:12 house. This will seem absurdly minimalist to dollhouse collectors, but it's what makes me most comfortable. So Arvin Lebec moved out and put his house on the market on FB Marketplace, partly furnished. He will eventually move into the Mulberry Lane, and I might at some future point also do a very small studio apartment.
Most of my feeling now is relief (with renewed enthusiasm for other projects), but there's also this weird sense of having drawn a final line under something I hadn't previously admitted was finished.
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