Hi there!

Happy Wednesday!

I hope you’re having a good week so far!

In 2019, I bought this cute house on Facebook Marketplace. It was a wreck–totally covered in hot glue. I got the hot glue off mostly using a knife, but I don’t recommend doing it that way. It’s dangerous, and I hurt myself more than once. I read that rubbing alcohol and/or using heat to melt the hot glue are helpful, so if you need to remove hot glue, try those methods. Be safe.

Anyway, the picture below shows how the house looked when I purchased it.

I liked the original colors, but I already had a blue house, and I wanted this house to be really colorful and happy. I also really wanted to experiment with textured walls.

I set to work right away. Because hot glue doesn’t stick very well, I didn’t have much trouble removing all the window frames, flowers, shutters, and doors.

I used plaster to texture the outside. It was surprisingly easy. I decided to have the primary color be yellow, and I used orange, green, and turquoise as accents. The finished product is pictured below.

It’s garish, but I love it. I would absolutely live there. I mean, they have a beaded front door! I have always wanted a beaded door. The house is 1:12 scale, so it’s definitely too big for Calico Critters, but they don’t mind. They like having extra space.

The picture below shows the interior of the Alpaca house at Christmas. It’s not as colorful as the outside. I’m honestly not vey satisfied with it, so I’ll probably redo it in the future. But for now, it’s cute enough, and I like that my adorable Alpaca family has a home.

I’m not sure if I prefer building houses from nothing or remodeling. They both have their pros and cons. When you start with just a kit, putting it all together can be exhausting, but it is entirely your own work. With a remodel, it can be tough to change things without breaking the house, especially with smaller dollhouses. It’s hard to get into corners and such to repaint, and taking it apart may not be an option. But the house is already built, and that can be nice.

Overall, I’ve had really good luck with my Facebook Marketplace finds. The Alpaca house and the Chiffon café are some of my favorite dollhouses.

Thank you for reading!