MAN BUILDS LIFE-SIZE DOLLHOUSE

PEOPLE

 

His Mom Ran Out of Patience as Collection of 230 American Girl Dolls Took Over Her Home, So He Built a Life-Size Dollhouse (Exclusive)

By Jordan Greene  Updated on December 25, 2025 09:00AM EST

 

After years of collecting American Girl dolls, Kris Sanchez had finally run out of room, and his mom had run out of patience. His growing collection of more than 230 dolls had started spilling into her house in Pennsylvania, forcing a conversation he knew was coming.

 

But, instead of giving anything up, Sanchez, who lives in New York City, came up with a compromise.

 

“I remember looking at my dad in 2021 and saying, ‘Can I break down walls in your house?’ ” Sanchez, 26, recalls to PEOPLE exclusively. “He was like, ‘What?’ And I said, ‘For Christmas, I would love a doll house.’ ”

 

However, what started as a simple idea quickly escalated.

 

“Originally it was gonna be this little corner thing — we weren’t gonna break anything big down,” he says. “But then I was like, you know what? If we’re gonna do this, let’s just demolish the whole room.”

 

With help from his brother-in-law, Sanchez’s dad tore out the closet in his bedroom at his parents' house, transforming the room into a dollhouse. The project became his year-long obsession.

 

“Anyone in my life at the time was probably so annoyed with me,” he jokes. “I was a little dictator being like, ‘I’m sorry, I can’t do anything. I’m going back to my parents’ house to build this dollhouse.’ I was painting the walls, doing wiring, doing this, that and the third.”

 

But the dollhouse needed furniture, and a vision. So Sanchez designed each room himself, often dragging friends into impromptu creative meetings.

 

“My friends were so annoyed with me because I would turn dinners into full-blown business meetings,” he says with a laugh. “It just overtook my life.”

 

After almost a year of work, by Christmas 2022, the dollhouse was finally finished. That’s when a friend encouraged him to take it to TikTok. At the time, he'd already been sharing about his collection on YouTube, creating his platform, The Doll Studio by Kris.

 

“My friend Dina — she’s also on YouTube — was like, ‘You have to get on TikTok. You will blow up overnight,’ ” he says. “I was afraid because with TikTok, anybody and their mom can see me. But I was like, who cares?”

 

The moment he posted a video of the dollhouse, everything changed.

 

“It was my first viral moment,” he says. “Within a couple of days, I went from like 2,000 followers to 10,000...now I’m so fortunate to be at like 72,000 followers.”

 

"It’s an American girl sorority house. 🥰," one user commented on Sanchez's TikTok video showing off the dollhouse.

 

"I’m so jealous.. I love this so much your collection is insane best one I’ve seen ever tbh," another person wrote.

 

Someone else chimed in, "Your parents are saints for keeping this up for you!"

 

As his platform grew, Sanchez leaned in — creating magazine-style covers, photoshoots and elaborate concepts for his dolls.

 

“When I started The Doll Studio by Kris, I said, ‘I don’t even need the brand’s validation. I just want to be synonymous with it,’ ” he explains. “People thought I was so egotistical — and yeah, partly — but I also want to show how far we can go with this.”

 

Most importantly, Sanchez says, he hopes his presence helps normalize the hobby for everyone.

 

“It’s helped me in so many ways,” he explains. “People hear I’m an American Girl collector and they’re like, ‘Oh, that’s weird.’ And then I show them the following, and suddenly it’s, ‘Oh, now this is cool.’ It’s helped me in friendships, in dating, in life. It’s really helped make me who I am today.”

 

“I want this to be a cool thing,” he says. “Let’s not make it weird. And the fact that I’m a male, I hope that resonates with other people.”

 

Sanchez adds how he is the youngest of four siblings — “the baby of the family,” as he puts it — and says his parents have never once tried to rein in his hobby.

 

“They’re very proud of everything I’ve accomplished with this,” he says. “Getting invited to the Tamron Hall Show, being featured on the Drew Barrymore Show, even having this conversation with [PEOPLE] — they see it as such a core part of who I am.”

 

“They knew this wasn’t something that was just going to go away,” he says. “Even when I wasn’t really playing with the dolls as a teen, they were still on my radar. They never left my central nervous system.”

 

And with the dollhouse now literally built into the walls of his parents’ home, Sanchez jokes the hobby is there to stay.

 

“I’m very fortunate my parents own that house, because this thing is cemented into the wall,” he says. “We’re not getting rid of it anytime soon.”

 

“They love showing it off to people, and I love annoying people with the conversation," he adds.

 

In fact, he’s already eyeing an expansion.

 

“I’m actually in the process of trying to have them break down another wall,” he says, laughing. “We’ll see how that works.”