Our American Girl Doll House

aka 'The Dolly Dorm'

{ The Beginning }

In the fall of 2011, we were browsing the internet for doll items when we stumbled across a photo of a young girl and her doll house that her dad built for her American Girl® dolls.  (many months later, we realized that this young girl was actually a friend we made over the internet - thanks Lindsey Z. for inspiring us!!) As we contemplated the design, we were blown away by the possibilities!  This idea had never occurred to us and as we mulled it over, we got more and more excited.  We could not only house our dolls there with all their furniture and accessories, but we could also incorporate designing and decorating which totally appealed to us as artists!  It was also in this early idea phase that we decided we didn't want to call it a 'doll house' but wanted to call it something that could 'grow' with us....and the name; "The Dolly Dorm" was decided upon.

We decided what room The Dolly Dorm should be in and then went about the task of figuring out how wide, how deep and how high it could/should be.  We really wanted three floors but didn't want it to be too high that we could not reach the top floor easily.  The width of our 'Dorm' would unfortunately be limited by the space between the bedroom closet and a window on the wall where we'd put this new feature.  The depth was determined by the depth of the side wall between the closet door frame and the wall we wanted to put the Dorm on.  We decided that we wanted the individual rooms' ceiling height to be 24" which meant that by the time we had three levels, we would still be able to reach the third floor by using a little step stool.  In the end, the overall dimensions would end up being; 81" wide x 77" high x 24" deep.

We asked a family friend to help us build our Dolly Dorm and off we went to buy the supplies.  This is also when we realized that it would need to be built in three separate sections and then stacked on top of each other once in the room - otherwise, it would not be able to get up the steps and through the bedroom door!  Glad we thought about this before Mr. M started cutting the wood.

The weeks passed and we anxiously awaited word on our project being completed.  We were crossing our fingers to have it arrive just after Christmas!  It did and we set about painting a base coat of primer.  After that, we decided to paint the entire thing - inside and out - in the same color of off-white.  Then we could do the individual rooms as we decided their colors.  By early February 2012, this is what the Dolly Dorm looked like!

The rooms are called and/or referred to as follows:

• The "Kanani" room, top left and the kitchen, top right.   
• The "zebra" room, middle left and the bathroom, middle right.  
• The laundry room, bottom left and the family room, bottom right.  

As stated above, all rooms are 24" deep x 24" tall.  Their widths are as follows:

• The "Kanani" room - 36"
• The Kitchen - 43.5"
• The "Zebra" room - 48"
• The Bathroom - 31.5"
• The Laundry room - 23.5"
• The Family Room - 55.5"

By the middle of March 2012, we had added quite a bit to the kitchen; a stove, a wall shelf, a little wall cabinet, and handmade cork board (complete with photographs of our overseas sponsored children) and the hanging parrot cage from American Girl doll Cécile's collection.

By the end of January 2013, we added some fun new items to 'The Zebra Room' like the little zebra patterned jewelry box that was a perfect 'dresser' for the dolls, a 'window' which is actually a table-top size picture frame from Target®, a little black 'locker' chandelier & little black 'locker' rug from the back-to-school area at Wal-Mart® and zebra patterned bedding for the bunk beds that we made ourselves.  We modified the cute arm chair that was found at a yard sale.  If you look really close in the very first photo, you'll see that the arm chair is actually an all-over light blue fabric.  We actually had an old 3-ring binder that had a vinyl cover with the hearts/zebra pattern that was worn out so we cut the vinyl out in shapes and taped them onto the chair to create a 'cover' for our arm chair to match the room.  Later, we decided discarded our 'cut-outs' in favor of painting the chair entirely ourselves and we love how it turned out.

At the same time, we added some items to "The Kanani Room" like the pink rug, some 'beachy' wall decor, a shell wreath and an adorable little Capiz shell wind chime. 

In addition, we had received lots of fun American Girl doll house items for Christmas and were able to add even more to the Dolly Dorm.  Some other new items we got were for the bathroom; the American Girl Bathroom Vanity (now retired) and the American Girl Salon Center Styling Caddy (now retired) and the American Girl Bubble Bathtub and Shower Curtain (also now retired).

UPDATE 7/29/2016:

We have had a lot of readers ask us about how we store/organize all our doll goodies.  One of the things we did a couple years ago was to purchase some tubs.  We measured the distance from the top of our dorm to the ceiling and then headed to the local Walmart.  We were happy to find some tubs that were an acceptable color and were NOT see-thru.  Turns out that we were able to fit (5) of them across the top.  We have them labeled so that we don't have to pull each one down when we are looking for something.  One is even labeled "Projects" and that is where we keep things that are 'in process' or we want to create in the future.  These tubs have been awesome for helping keep us organized!

(This page is a work in progress so keep checking back as we add more info and photos to this page!)