From my own experience, “Hail Mary” art projects unfortunately motivate me the most efficiently as an artist and procrastinator. When I found a gutted Victorian dollhouse on the side of the road in Milwaukee’s East Side neighborhood in July, I thought “this would make a really great gift for my two nieces come Christmas time.” One day I decided to pull the dollhouse off the shelf in my apartment’s small craft room that I affectionately refer to as the “computer room”—which it’s called not because it has a computer, but because I believe childhood shrines such as a Midwestern computer room are with you always. Anyway, the day I pulled the dollhouse off the shelf was December 11.
Giving myself less than two weeks to furnish and renovate the exterior and interior seemed doable in thought, but in practice it felt like a stretch even on the first evening. This is a tale about the support, suffering, and interactions along the way of the dollhouse renovation.
Dollhouses are intricate projects. Unlike the mass-produced plastic dollhouses and Barbie Dreamhouses that gained popularity in the 1960s, the first couple hundred years’ of dollhouses were individually unique. According to the Mount Prospect Historical Society, dollhouses trace back to northern Europe in the 1600s. Interestingly enough, they were not made with children in mind, and traditionally housed only furniture, not dolls.
Before the dollhouses we know today, these houses were called “cabinet houses”—or, a fun one, “dockenhaus,” if living in Germany. These houses were viewed as indicators of social class and status in society. To level it up, “baby houses” were exact replicas of the homeowner’s house, copying each room down to the home’s exact furniture. This level of prestige is quite different from my childhood 1980s Strawberry Shortcake house, or the Lincoln Logs I would reenact 9/11 with.
Thankfully, my nieces are growing up post-Industrial Revolution where dollhouses are more accessible (so accessible you may find one on a curb) and are intended for all the wonderful things children can and should enjoy: design, imagination, household management, and gossiping in the attic.
The beginning of the renovation started with deciding on wallpaper, along with a task often paired with DIY projects: a Facebook Marketplace negotiation. I took browsing for furniture fairly seriously. Like most folks, every interaction I’ve ever had on Marketplace is odd, but I think negotiating for dollhouse furniture may have taken the cake, for I have never met a demographic of sellers so unwilling to be talked down a dollar. The furniture has been in their family for 100 years and if you can’t meet their asking price, my lord, that furniture will stay there 100 more years.
Eventually I found a set that was an assortment of era-appropriate furniture such as a Victrola, a writing desk, an ice box, a water basin, and so on. The seller was responsive for being of a—for lack of a better word—different generation than myself. But the holdup was she didn’t believe in digital currency and lived out of state. So I did what all desperate hobbyists do: I filmed a video of myself stuffing the cash amount into an envelope with her address on it, licking the envelope (free content), and depositing the envelope into the post box on Humboldt Boulevard. She thanked me for my honesty and a few days later the parcel arrived and then we were really cooking.
Following my own 2024 life lesson: just because you can do something alone doesn’t mean you have to. They say it “takes a village to raise a child,” but no one mentions the village needed to renovate a dollhouse in a few weeks’ time for Christmas morning.
I remember standing for a wedding in my early 20s and the best man gave this great speech about how the groom was resourceful and “had a guy” for everything: mechanic, baker, surgeon, hoover repair guy, etc. It felt like a speech from Goodfellas, except the groom was Bulgarian. Anyway, I like to think in my 10 years of living in Milwaukee I’ve learned which direction to bike if I need specific assistance on something. While I have acquired no miniaturist friends here, I’ve made a couple professional woodworker pals and one friend who spent a few summers painting houses. They all seemed up to the task of helping if a hot meal was involved.
The dollhouse was made of a lauan, a relatively cheap material similar to plywood. I wanted to give the roof some dimension with shingles, so I had one of said woodworker friends get me long strips of poplar that I could cut down to make the shingles. I began hot gluing the shingles on individually, quite proud of myself, only to be grilled with gratuitous questions such as, “You’re installing a roof without a watershed?” and “No gutters?” and “What about synthetic membranes?” There was talk of OSHA and how hot glue is not suitable for long-term structural bonding. I enjoyed the tiny disapprovals over renovating decisions like painting over the original staircase—all critiques you’d find in the comment section of a renovation video online.
Despite the teasing about lack of a watershed or that painting the outside with acrylic instead of exterior paint wasn’t wise or waterproof, I really did feel the support from my friends that found themselves in rotation of helping me get this done on time. When we found ourselves frustrated, we’d say, “Christmas is for the kids,” and get back to work.
Looking back now, I reflect on how tender the conversations around the renovation were. It’s as if the dollhouse became a buffer and provided a window to talk about fear, heartbreak, and how emotionally taxing and even lonely the holidays can be. There’s something about the combination of the holidays and tedious tasks that steer you to revisit the status of your own heart.
Hunkering around the dollhouse in these little chats felt meaningful. There was a moment when the renovation evoked an “I’ve installed hundreds of doors, why is this being so difficult?” and “I hate this gosh darn door!” from my friend who was wrestling, head tucked into the living room, with the front door. Followed by a “Now honestly, what the fuck were they thinking?”—though one might suggest he wasn’t talking about the door anymore.
For me, it was a lot easier to talk about tender things, like my fear of the declining health of my parent, when my head was tucked away applying bedroom wallpaper, or to say, “I think this therapy exercise tapped in too deep today” while I was in the corner dicing up 1,000 shingles. Grief is hard, the holidays are hard, but something about this renovation felt okay.
Renovating the dollhouse became my personality during those two weeks. I’d run into folks and they’d ask me how it was coming along. I’d even receive messages from people sending me dollhouse inspiration. It was cool to become known as the “dollhouse guy.”
Christmas morning came and I was still working on the damn dollhouse with my friends. The paint was still drying as it was being driven to my nieces in Kenosha. It was great, a true DIY love story: operating down to the wire.
It’s interesting to reflect on the history of dollhouses that didn’t house dolls and weren’t meant for children and compare it with this wild project. Surprising my nieces Christmas afternoon was special as they approached the thing in awe with wide eyes, smiles, and confusion. Then Evelyn looked at me and said, “But where are the dolls?”
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