Making a Dollhouse (Part 1)

This past Christmas Chad gave me a kit to make a dollhouse.  I've been wanting to make one for a long time (I even started one a few years ago, but learned the hard way that you should probably not start by building the largest and most complicated house you can find).  One Christmas, when I was about 6 or 7 years old, my grandma built and decorated a dollhouse for me.  The inside was made to look like her house at the time--she used pieces of the carpeting in her living room for the dollhouse living room, a piece of her kitchen tile for the house kitchen, etc.  The house was beautiful--it was a three-story blue Colonial with and a big white front porch and black roof.  Coincidentally, the house I live in now matches the blue of the dollhouse exactly and has a big white front porch and black roof.  Maybe I was trying to replicate the dollhouse in real life?  Anyhow, I still have that house stored safely in my parents' attic.  I plan to give it to Charlotte when she's older and I'd be lying if I said I didn't want it back so I can play with it again, too.

After I got that dollhouse I always wanted to make my own.  One time I built a Barbie "dream house" out of my dad's old shoeboxes.  I took the lids off, stood the boxes upright, and stapled them together--three across for the first floor, two on the second floor, and an attic. It turns out that a men's size 12 shoe box is the perfect height for Barbie.  Even Ken had enough space to stand out without hitting his head on the ceiling.  Fast forward to present day.  I have a kit from Greenleaf Dollhouses to make "The Storybook Cottage."  It's one of the smaller and simpler designs available (you can buy kits to make huge Victorian mansions with 10 rooms, multiple staircases, and tons of intricate details).  This little cottage has just 2 rooms--no stairs and nothing too fancy or complicated.  It's a good practice piece and will give me an idea if I ever want to attempt something more challenging.

The schematics--page 1 of many.  And this is the "easy" house.

My dining room table taken over by parts sheets

Front right wall

Stain for the floors--this is a good one and odor free!

If I had the time and patience to use wood glue instead of hot glue I would have.  I know it would give a much cleaner look but it also requires way more patience than I have--all that clamping, taping, and waiting.  No thanks.  If I end up really liking how this one turns out and decide to make another, I can see testing out the wood glue route.  But for now, for just a simple practice house that Charlotte will probably play with in a couple years, hot glue works just fine.

It doesn't seem like I should have too much more building to do, but yet I have what looks like 400,000 more parts left.  There's also close to 1 million roof shingles, which I'm not terribly excited about.  Once  the rest of the building, gluing, etc. is finished it will be time for the fun part: decorating!  I'm planning on bright colors, inside and out.  The house came with a small furniture kit, too, which I'll probably take outside and spray paint this week.  If I really wanted to go all out the possibilities are endless.  You can actually get mini planks to make hardwood floors, special small scale wallpaper, and even kits to wire the house with electricity.  I think if I ever did that I would need to lock the house in a protective glass case so it would never get damaged, ever.  I'll stick with simple and not so precious that it can't take a little wear and tear!


I hope you had a good weekend, and Happy Monday (ugh, Mondays).  Have a great week!


~Stacy