Alyssa's Dollhouse - Construction Begins

We paid just over $200 for the Montpelier Dollhouse kit (December 1997).  The kit was as is, with no window upgrades or other enhancements as I've seen offered through Internet sources since purchasing locally. 

We liked the layout of the house which was key to it's selection.  I had decided I wanted the dollhouse to be livable, which meant to me that it had to have a kitchen, a bathroom as well as general living quarters.  The presence of a bathroom (of all things) was the key feature that sold me on the Montpelier.

I started construction of the kit by putting together the two end pieces, the floors and the front of the house (see in progress picture from preceding page).   Once that was together, I was able to experiment with wall placement and see the proportions with one or two pieces of furniture in the house.

We took some measurements and decided to select a new window for the Living Room, and to purchase the bathroom fixtures before moving on.   Unfortunately, the window would be more difficult to cut out now that the wall was in place.   However, as we didn't see a need to replace the window until after the initial assembly, there was nothing we could do about it.

Once we purchased the bathroom fixtures, we were able to work with the bathroom layout.  What we came up with is to your left.  We moved the bathroom so that the hallway would be at the back of the house, and the bathroom would be against the back well and hidden unless the door is left open. 

We were able to assemble the revised floor plan entirely from pieces from the original set.  This required an additional adjustment, as we used one of the room dividers from the first floor plan.  This allowed us to work with a more open floor plan on the first floor as we eliminated the hallway, for a more open Living Room.  A single short piece (from the second floor plan) replaces the divider between the Hallway and Living Room making the Front Door area more of a foyer than Hallway.

Continue to Page 3

The 2nd Floor Plan Suggested By The Directions

The Plan As We Build it