If you have a daughter, her room was probably filled with pink toys at some point. Whether or not it was her favorite color, sometimes as parents, we can’t help but succumb to the gender stigma.

One of my favorite toys as a kid was dollhouses. I couldn’t get enough! Seriously—one wasn’t enough. I had multiple, all spread out in my room. Barbie dream houses and little doll adobes…I just loved playing with them so much.

Well, of course, as little girls grow, their interests change—and when I no longer wanted those dollhouses anymore, what was my mom to do with those bulky things? She probably threw them away or handed them down to another little girl.

As it turns out, there are a lot of cooler things you can do with dollhouses. And one mom named Samantha Browning knows the deal. In the spirit of all things spooky in the month of October, Samantha decided to upcycle a plastic dollhouse into a spooky mansion.

She found the idea on TikTok and thought it was brilliant. One day, she haded to a thrift store, picked up her first dollhouse for just $8, got a can of black spray paint, and began her journey.

The first one took her about five hours to create, which is actually on the low end of how long she puts into these works of art. She might spend over 10 hours on just one dollhouse.

“The dollhouses have so many of their own designs molded into them that you can really spend any amount of time changing them to fit the theme you’re going for,” she explained. “The more houses I get, the more I try to change those items to make the piece completely different and grow from where I started.”

As she created more and more Halloween-style mansions, she got more and more creative. She continued to find cheap, old dollhouses and transform them into a spooktacular sight. They really came in handy to decorate her home, especially in light of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“This year, with the pandemic and Halloween being ‘canceled,’ I may try to make one of those banister pipes to slide candy down for families that still want to participate in a safe way,” Samantha explained. “I have one of the dollhouses displayed on an interior porch, but the night of, I will probably bring the two spookiest houses outside with battery operated candles.”

You can find more photos of all the beautiful mansions here.

Wow! How cool are these upcycled Halloween mansions? What’s the coolest thing you’ve ever upcycled before?