The Other House

I know it seems that all I've been doing is working on Meg's house, but there is another house I've been designing and building all by myself.

I saw this on Pinterest and thought it would be something Reid would like. Who wouldn't want a playhouse inside with the AC running? ESPECIALLY in San Antonio.

Unfortunately, this one cost about $75 and shipping was $45 (from South Africa). This is a house I could do myself, and much more in line with the budget tht Reiderbug needs to be comfortable. A Highland Park house on a Ft. Worth budget. It needed to look less girly, too, and I wanted it to have the same look as our house.

Instead of buying a large tablecloth or piecing together lots of fabric, I went to the Salvation Army Family Store and picked up a queen size flat sheet. I wanted king, but the budget conscious can't be picky. It turned out to be the right size anyway. My house has a gray front door and red shutters, so I went to the men's racks and picked out an XL shirt in each of the colors. Because it was half off white tag day, I was able to get 2 of the items at half price, making my total expenditure for the house $9. SO much better than $75. We all know that it's not the materials that drive up the cost, but the labor. Lucky for Reid he had cheap labor.

2 XL men's shirts and a queen size flat sheet from the Salvation Army.

I didn't want to take my sewing machine, so instead I did it all low tech. I had a lot of bonding tape and Wonder Under heat bonding stuff, so I used that for hemming and attaching pieces. What little needed to be stitched was done by hand. I measured the low tech way, too, by eyeballing it. I made a template for the shutters so they would be the same size.

cutting the door and shutters and measuring the walls

I pressed the sheet and centered it where I wanted it. The great thing about using a sheet was that all the edges were finished, so I didn't have to. I used the iron on hem tape to finish the edges around the door and windows and I used the Wonder Under to attach the windows on the door and the shutters. Instead of a whole flower box, I made flowers with some leftover felt I had and just stitched them on. I didn't cut the corners to fit because I wanted it to be able to fit on a different table if it needed to. I just did a loose running stitch to fit it, but would be easy to take out. The door knob was a big button off one of Meg's dresses. I promised her that when she gets back to her pre-pregnancy size, I'll buy another button and she can have that one back.

corner pinned for running stitch to fit it to the table

kinda blurry, sorry.

The results were exactly what I wanted. A cute little house for Reid to play in that looked a little like Mamie's.

before we got the gray door with windows

As a post script, I want to say that he never spent a minute in it, unless you count the time before it was made and we were just measuring. The dog, however, loved it. Maybe the next baby will be a little more appreciative.