This is the Rabbit House. This is the first one our holder made, so of course, it was going to be for the rabbit family. They have the most children, plus the grandparents. I was a drawer-dweller when this house was under construction, but I made sure I watched the progress and reported it back to the other drawer dwellers. Basically, it was made from four dead rose bush stumps our holder dug up out of her garden. I’ve been told the stumps sat outside her workshop in the weather for a couple of years before she decided to do something with them.
So as for construction, this is what I saw: First she laid layers of foam insulation (like styrofoam, but for construction) carved in u-shapes onto a piece of plywood, glued with construction adhesive. She then attached the four stumps through, the top of the foam pieces, and into the plywood, using long threaded rods. She arranged the stumps so the center was left open for the living areas. The foam was covered with papier-mache, all patted into place and then molded to look like layers, then painted with gesso (white glue and plaster of paris) to make the surface hard as rocks. Trust me, it’s hard. Then the gesso was painted to look like earth banks, or stone, or whatever your imagination tells you it is.
Then came the cardboard. Yes, we are big on recycling here in the village. The walls and floor of the parents’ bedroom, and the upstairs parlor (with the fireplace) are cardboard, covered with twigs and bark. The windows are pieces of plexiglass, which she cuts with her band saw. The roof is bits of bark from the garden store. The roof over the bay window in the back is made from blades pulled from a sugar cone (a really big pine cone). And yes, those are real deer horns, harvested legally, years ago, with a permit. They came with a whole dead deer attached, but we don’t talk about that.
This house is now a couple of years old, and the decoration is starting to come loose. Our holder has had to replace some of the reindeer moss (it dries out after time) and reglue some of the silk floral bits. Since this was the first house she made, she hadn’t yet learned to guard against glue webs. Honestly, the first pictures she took, years ago, made the thing look like it was covered with cyborg spider webs. (You know- they’re plastic? Plastic webs from plastic spiders? Or whatever hot glue is made from? Haha.) She’s learned a lot since then. She still uses reindeer moss, understanding that she’ll have to replace some of it after a couple of years, but it’s the best look for this kind of thing. She’s also learned that hot melt glue isn’t the best thing for rocks. She makes glue now that looks just like mortar. Her furniture is improving, too. Except for a few dollhouse furniture items she bought for us, and the dishes, of course, all the furniture is made from wood she harvested from from trees around her yard. She likes poplar and aspen wood best. It’s the easiest to cut, and it will dry in about six months stored indoors. She cuts up to four-inch dried limbs into strips, then uses the wood for construction.
They tell me as soon as the Beavers’ mill is finished, they’ll take over all the wood cutting.
The best part of this, and all her houses, is the stairs and railings. And the windows. Yeah, there’s windows, despite the fact that the fronts of these houses are all open. But that’s dollhouses for you. You have to suspend reality a bit when you’re dealing with this kind of thing. The houses are lighted with battery-driven light strings. Our holder is now an expert at making spiral staircases out of chunks of cut wood, and the railings are all made from sticks. Every spring she gets a whole new batch of building materials, when her friends and relatives let her go through their spring prunings before they put the twigs in the green waste. And people collect bark from dead trees for her. She’s got bins of the stuff.
Here are the rest of the pictures of the Rabbit house. The rabbits are very happy living there. There’s even a bed for each of them. The older kids like their nest beds, the twins love their bunkbeds. And our holder lately figured out how to make hurricane lamps for us out of beads and little bitty bottles.
Life is good here in the Bear Kingdom Village, except for the cat hair, of course, but that’s another story.
