You can thank Georgia Girl for this impromptu post. She asked "what size are your dios?" It was just easier to show some of the dios than answer that question. Morristown resides in what used to be my family room, which is located down a small flight of stairs off the kitchen. Warning: Many areas appear to be in disarray. It's because I have a place for just about everything, and I will leave stuff out until I have the time to put them back where they belong. It beats putting them back in the wrong place and spending too much time looking for them later.
If you look off in the distance, you can see the stairs.
When you first come down the stairs, you run into the hair salon and the daycare dios. They are sitting on top of my sewing cabinet. On top are all my Rement items, still in their boxes. My handbags and shoes are organized in two plastic cases up top. The motorcycles and an extra Barbie house are stored here. To the right in the metal case, each drawer is dedicated to something. There is a drawer for jewelry, sports accessories, hair accessories, luggage, etc.
To the left of that is a shelving unit I bought a long time ago. It's really two pieces. You can stack them on top like I have here, put them side by side, or completely separate them. The shelves are adjustable. This used to be my library of all my How To books. I moved the library to my living room. I still have a couple of cubbies to clear our to free up space for two more dios. The center cubbies are twice as large as the outer cubbies.
Here is another angle. The girls bedroom, Tina's office, Danielle's spare bedroom, and Debbie's dressmaking studio, are the permanent dios here. The doctor's office, the Dance Studio, and Robyn's kitchen are all temporary dios that get changed out at a whim. The dance studio is where all the restaurants get built. How do you like my parking garage on the bottom? To the left on the bottom is all the restaurant stuff, so I can build them quickly. Right above the cars is where the Pet Boutique is going to be built.
Moving down to the end of the room is another deep bookcase. It has three shelves and great storage with double doors underneath. There's not enough room for three dio areas, so I use the top shelf to hold lots of props. The second shelf is Nichalet's Boutique. It's a mess right now. The ladies raided the place for clothes, and Racquel has not put everything back yet. The bottom shelf is where I built the Hotel Monaco Lounge. This is not permanent. I've also had a Harley Davidson dio here with a pool table and everything. No one got to see it. I didn't even take pictures of it. I'm sure it will be back one day.
Here I am standing almost in the middle of the room. You can see the bookcase I just showed to the right. There are quite a few clear storage boxes in that area. They are organized by room. All the kitchen stuff in one tub, the outside stuff in another, etc. For now, the miniature house is sitting on my sewing drafting table. My plan it to put that in the dining room, eventually. To the left is more very organized storage bins. Oh yeah, and there is the grocery store. The college girls are here. They stopped so Jasmine could get some money from her brother. Another story you guys didn't get to see.
To the left, all along the wall, are the permanent houses; The Andersons, The Taylors, and The New Taylors (Danielle and Rod). They sit on tables, which allows for storage underneath. The A-Frame house sits in the middle of the room on a table. I plan to add table cloths to keep the storage out of view. This center configuration was redesigned a couple of months ago. The Anderson and The Taylor homes are both in new locations. As you can see I am in the process of rebuilding the Anderson home. I will be adding shelving above it to make a 2nd level. This is probably where I will put The Den.
This is the same picture I showed in the beginning. Now hopefully it makes more sense.
The Anderson patio had to be redesigned with the recent move. Their backyard is no longer next to the Taylors. It's a disaster at the moment.
This is right next to the Anderson home along the wall. On the bottom is Tony and Antoinette Taylor's place. Still in the rebuilding process. Above their place is the versatile condo. It's where Halle, Jason and Lynn, and a host of other people will live. Most of the families that don't have permanent homes, will have rooms here as needed for stories. I just dismantled Jason and Lynn's place. Nikki is modeling a new sectional I finished yesterday for a customer. That is the last of that material. Just in case you were wondering. On top you will see three bins. These are supposed to be the active dolls. One for men, one for women, and the white bin is full of kids.
To the left of The Taylors is Danielle's place. As you can see it, too is in disarray. Mainly because I moved some dolls from a dio, here temporarily. Won't take me long to whip it into shape. On top are most of my clothes, nicely organized. Got the idea from an organization post by Fashion Doll Foto, featuring Christina, to organize clothes by color. It's been working very well. Makes it real easy to put clothes away now. .
My final bookcase is the one I am most proud of. I built this bookcase long before I was doing doll stories or videos. My intent was to make it my one Barbie house. It was going to have windows and doors, and I was going to do miniature brick on the outside. I bought my lumber from the hardware store, put it in my jeep, brought it to my garage, built it, primed it, and set it up in my family room. All by myself. I was the queen at figuring out how to lift and move huge pieces of furniture by myself. As you can see I never put in the windows or doors, but this has come in handy for my dios. Right now I only use the top two shelves, but if I need more dio space, I will clear off the third shelf.
On the top shelf is a dio waiting to be shot. There is a new Asian Buffet restaurant being built. The second shelf currently has Nikki's office, but that is not permanent. I put a lot of different dios here. It's deeper than the average bookshelf, so it's more versatile. The hotel suite will probably be built here.
Next to it is more storage.
My dusty guitar and amp live here, too. I bought them many, many years ago. I am showing this so when I tell you guys I've signed up for guitar lessons, it won't be a surprise.
My best buddy, Elmo lives here too. I am a huge Elmo fan and watch him every chance I get. Here he is doing the "Hokey Pokey". Left arm in....
Right foot in.... Tickle Me Elmo lives in my bedroom. He cracks me up!
So that is the mini tour of Morristown. Most of the dios take place here. The wedding and the reception was set up on my dining room table. It's all dismantled now. It isn't often that I have to leave the family room, but for that massive production, I did. Hope that helps answer any questions you had about my setup. I like having some permanent dios, like the hair salon, the daycare, and the grocery store. But for the most part, I really enjoy the condo concept I came up with. As long as you are organized, it doesn't take that long to set up these mini temporary dios. The Dance Studio story will be posted much later today. I'm off to make furniture and food now! Have a wonderful day.
