It’s a dollhouse every little girl would love.

But this house belongs to an older lady who has given it more love than can be imagined.

The dollhouse, a two-story Colonial, belongs to Naomi Knudson of Silverdale. Knudson, who just turned 92, built the house in 1992, with the help of her husband, Ted, who died in 2006.

And unlike most dollhouses, it was built specifically to fit several special pieces of furniture.

As Knudson tells, in 1931, her husband’s family bought a cottage at Clear Lake, Iowa. It had long been vacant and in the closet, the family found doll furniture — dark Pennsylvania Dutch furniture.

There were no girls in the family, so Ted’s mother put the furniture away, hoping maybe someday she’d have granddaughters to pass it down to.

But it was Ted and Naomi’s daughters, Linda Valley now of Seabeck and Mary Huigens now of Naperville, Illinois, who first played with the furniture in the 1960s.

“We would stack orange crates on top of each other to create rooms for the furniture,” Huigens said. “We got old wallpaper books and used the wallpaper to decorate the rooms.”

Sometimes rooms were mapped out on the table top using tape to divide the rooms from each other, Knudson said. A cast iron stove and pots were added later.

But in 1992, when she and her husband were on a trip in the Midwest, they went to a place that sold dollhouses and Knudson decided they needed a dollhouse for their doll furniture.

“In the years since our furniture was made back in the 1920s, doll furniture and dollhouses had become smaller,” she said. “None of the dollhouses were big enough to fit our furniture.”

She came home and got to work with hand saws and hand drills and created the two-story dollhouse which is painted a wonderful shade of blue-gray. The walls in each room are papered with fabric. Unlike many dollhouses, the front of the house swings open to expose the rooms inside.

“I made it that way using piano hinges to attach the front of the house,” she said. “That way there’s no need to turn the house around to play with the dolls inside.”

“I used the corner cabinet (doll furniture) to determine the height for them living room,” she said. “And I used the long couch to decide how long the living room needed to be.”

The house is a two-bedroom, two-bath home, with a living room, dining room, kitchen, and attic nursery and playroom. Each room has one or two pieces of the dark antique doll furniture, including a cedar chest, bundling bed, cradle, corner cabinet, drop-leaf table and chair, rocker and footstool, desk and long bench.

The dollhouse’s address is 1922 —the year Knudson was born.

After the dollhouse was built, Naomi and Ted began adding to it. Using a pattern she found at a doll store, she created the “residents” of the house. They are small beanbag dolls ranging from an inch to three inches tall. Accessories and other furnishings were purchased to complete the rooms.

At the time the house was built, the Knudsons lived in Kelso and had a large screened-in porch where the doll house was displayed. But when the couple added a hot tub in 1995, they decided to give the house to Mary so her daughters, Betsy and Kate, could play with it.

For years, the doll house stayed with them in the Chicago suburb where they lived. Then, last November when Knudson was visiting her daughter, she saw the house and decided she wanted to have some of the antique doll furniture with her at her residence at Crista Shores retirement community.

“I just had to play with that furniture again,” she said. “I packed it in my suitcase and decided when I got back, I’d put the kitchen things in my kitchen, as a little display, and then the other things in the rooms where they belonged.”

Her daughter boxed up other accessories and mailed them to her and then, this past March, she decided to surprise her mother and shipped her the entire house.

“I wasn’t sure I was going to be able to do it,” she said. “But the folks at our local UPS store did it for us.”

Since March, the house has been re-assembled on a six-foot-long board that sits on a table at Knudson’s residence. The board has been covered with green fabric that resembles grass. Each room in the house is complete with every possible detail, including electric lights which were added by Huigens a few months ago.

“The lights really make the house look real,” Knudson said.

And the dollhouse also gained the attention of her son-in-law John Valley, Linda’s husband.

“He was looking at it one day and said ‘This house needs a balcony,’” she said. “So he brought his tools and added one.”

Now the right side of the house has a second-story balcony, complete with french doors.

As for Knudson, she’s in charge of changing the seasons at the house. With it sitting on the grass-covered board, she has areas to add gardens in the spring, and flowers and a reflecting pool in the summer.

Currently, the house is ready for fall, with a pumpkin patch, a tree with crows and a cart pulled by a donkey.

Her friends and the other residents at the retirement home drop by to see the house once a season.

“When they come now, I let them each pick a pumpkin from the pumpkin patch,” she said, noting that they are candy.

She’s already planning for winter and Christmas. She and her daughters plan to make ice skaters with skates on their feet, made from paper clips.

“My friends want me to add snow this winter,” she said. “But I told them if I did, they’d have to do the vacuuming afterwards.”

It’s hard for Knudson to decide what she likes best about her dollhouse. Her favorite accessories include the Christmas fruitcake in a tin and the cookbooks in the kitchen.

One of her favorite items is a knitted rug in the living room, made by Huigens.It resembles a braided rug that Naomi handmade using scraps of fabric from important items of clothing, including her late husband’s suits and ties.

Every detail in this dollhouse has such special meaning that in order to really see everything, it can take several visits. But that’s OK with her.

“I love sharing it with people,” she said. “It gives me an excuse to play with it.”