Behind the Build: My First Kitbash--The Original Rowbottom Manse - Now the Wells Home (Alison Jr Look-alike)

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It all began here! The original Rowbottom manse kit bash! This is a RGT Alison Jr. look-alike made by Petite Dreams and sold by Target.

(For a complete pictorial chronicle, see the Webshots album listed on the left.)

One day, near the end of 2000, my sister came bearing gifts – a RGT Alison Jr look-alike dollhouse kit, a houseful of furniture, and a family to live in it. At the time, since our dollhouse building career had not started, we did not know about the RGT Alison, Jr. It was after we got into the hobby, that we discovered the whole big world of dollhouse miniatures.

Since I think on a personal level, I decided that the house would be peopled, the people would have names, the house would have a location, and the occupants of the house would have a lifestyle. All of these would contribute to the ambience of the house.

I named the family Rebecca and Derek Rowbottom; and since my sister bought the original supplies and just loves Fredericksburg, Virginia, she got to pick that town as the location. The Rowbottoms have since moved into a large Georgian (Sunnybrook Farm). Martha and George Wells now live here. The time is the present.

With some trepidation, my husband and I built the house. It is MDF and actually, went together very well. After it was finished, it looked small, and when I tried to place the furniture, I realized that the house was small! The rooms were not wide enough nor were they deep enough for all the furniture and the Rowbottom life style. The Rowbottoms have lots of family and friends and needed room for entertaining.

Well, what to do? The family had a discussion (including my Derek Rowbottom who, fortunately, is a highly qualified architect). We decided to make it bigger, but not longer than 48”. My husband bought a 2’ x 4’ piece of plywood on which it would rest, and THAT was immutable.

We bought a second dollhouse to make more, and larger, rooms, but we still needed to add 4” to the depth. Ye gad! Unfortunately, we could not find 3/8” MDF so we used 3/8” cabinet grade birch plywood where we didn’t have enough MDF. (Merging MDF and plywood was not a problem, thankfully -- I used wood glue and “plugs” to hold them together.) Now I had a scheme for length and depth.

The first tool I bought for this venture was a Dremel with flexi-shaft. The second thing I did was to get an HBS catalog.

The Bash -- Before and After Pictures:


We broke apart the house we had just put together and modified the design to use the two houses. As you can see in the photos, we added an entire vertical section with three rooms (dining room , living room
and master bedroom), and added 2" in width to the middle section, and enlarged the kitchen . We now had extra parts so I added three porches to the sides of the house. The larger roof area gave room for a large rooftop garden.

I also changed and moved the front door, added three French doors, and added internal doors in the kitchen, dining room, and living room. The staircases were too narrow and came without rails. My husband cut an extra staircase in half and I glued each half onto a “full” stair and added railings. I carpeted the stairs to hide the seams.

The entrance room, a combination foyer and sitting room with stairway came about because I wanted a nice sitting room but did not have enough room for a hallway for the stairs. Cake decoration Grecian columns made cheap and elegant additions to the foyer to “mark” a line for the stair hall.

On the third floor, I decided that I would rather have room in the rooms so the third floor stair hallway is “hidden ” .

The attic was expanded a bit to have more storage area and a sewing room and the rest of the roof became a wonderful rooftop entertaining area .There were some siding problems because the siding was milled onto the MDF and I had some trouble blending the seams (now hidden by foliage). The house is completed except for some finishing touches here and there, including making a much taller main chimney. Landscaping was made from dried, silk, and plastic items from Michaels, with some items actually bought from dollhouse shops!

The size of the original dollhouse was about 24" wide x 14 ½ “deep x 38” tall; the modified house is 48” wide (includes side porch) x 19 ½” deep x 38” tall.

Funny thing-- I did not realize that people kit bashed all the time; I thought I was committing some kind of sacrilege by modifying an “existing” design!