The dollhouse my father and grandfather built for me has been empty for many years, virtually abandoned on a storage room shelf, wedged between trick-or-treat jack-o-lanterns and a decoupaged shoebox made to hold valentines.

My entire family has heard my solemn promise over the years that I was going to repair and decorate the dollhouse as soon as I retired. The biggest setback was that the dollhouse’s base, which gave the somewhat fragile structure stability, had been destroyed when my parents’ basement flooded. The storage room shelf has provided a secure stand; but I have to climb over multiple boxes and bins to get to the house. There was no way I could work on it there. I imagined myself, paintbrush in hand, perched on a stack of empty Amazon boxes, my back resting against half-used rolls of wrapping paper, my cell phone light trained on the dollhouse.

Fortunately for me (and for the dollhouse), my son and daughter-in-law surprised me on the day of my retirement with a refurbished TV stand. My son purchased it from Facebook Marketplace, sanded it, and refinished it; and my daughter-in-law chose a huge rattan basket to go in the open space at the bottom, perfect for storing dollhouse accessories and other small toys. The top of the stand swivels!

Here is the dollhouse stand.

Here is the dollhouse a few moments after we extracted it from the far reaches of the storage room.

Here’s a picture of the dollhouse stand, ready and waiting in my office which is also used for my granddaughter’s playroom when she visits. Notice the dollhouse is still not there. Nope, it’s still in the storage room. I have moved it to an accessible workspace, which is still crowded but not as treacherous.

Nothing is preventing me from renovating the dollhouse now that I have the dollhouse family (provided by my parents) and the dollhouse stand (provided by my son and daughter-in-law); so It’s up to me to find the time to get to work! It’s been too long since that dollhouse was the scene of story after story, created and enacted by my younger self. Sharing these stories with the slicing community helped me remember how critical the dollhouse was in developing my story-loving, storytelling heart. Hopefully, my granddaughter and future grandchildren will find the dollhouse the perfect place to spark their imaginations.