My daughter Abby had wanted a dollhouse for a long time, so we bought a kit from Greenleaf to build together at night and on the weekends. Here is a collection of pictures showing the process of building the house from start to finish.
I upgraded a lot of the features of the house to add more charm - the hardwood floors, custom railings, doors, doorknobs and molding, the chimney stones, the shingles, the front brick patio… the list is long, but the results paid off in the end.
DAY 1.
We decided to use the Underneath of Abby’s loft to start assembling the dollhouse. Instructions are out, we’re okay-to-go.
To give the base some stability, structure, and to prevent warping and twisting, I epoxied in aluminum L-bars across the bottom and then buried them in insulation spray foam to keep the base from sounding so hollow.
I needed a blade at the level of the edge to trim off the excess foam, so I made this jig out of cardboard and hot glue.
Worked like a charm. The handsaw helped, too.
Homemade vice made from workout weights to hold the base while I cut off the excess wood…
…with my homemade manual jigsaw. I rented a jigsaw, but the stroke length was too long - it kept hitting the lip around the edge. Sawing by hand meant I could nibble cut back and forth as little as ½ inch.
Sanding the epoxied edges.
Socks filled with quarters, nickels, and dimes. Perfect sandbags to weigh down the walls as they dry.
Abby and I putting together the front wall.
Painter’s tape is the best.
“You shall not move while drying!”
Now it’s starting to look like a house.
Assembling the stairs.
Abby gluing on trim.
Another improvement. I closed up this peek-through into the bedroom to add more wall surface area for furniture and chairs.
Abby priming the stairs.
The bottom edge of the cuppola roof was uneven, so I borrowed a USB projector, put up an image of a white, 1-pixel horizontal line, and used that to draw a new level trim line.
Paint colors for the different rooms.
Sanding down the wood putty. Safety first!
Using After Effects to figure out the size and shape of the flooring. I wasn’t happy with the results, so I used an alternate method.
I didn’t like the railings that came with the kit, so I bought rails and spindles, building my own.
Priming the door.
Abby priming the house.
Starting to paint the wood trim base color.
Abby masking off the trim to prep for the wood grain paint wash.
Adding the wood grain paint wash to the trim.
Every 6 months my dentist gives me a goody bag with 50 toothbrushes. Finally putting them to good use.
Painting the ceilings.
Abby starting to paint the interior walls.
Polyurethaning the floors.
The polyurethane makes such a difference.
Rollering on rubber cement to stick down the floors.
Rubber cementing the backs of the floor sheets.
To keep the floor from sticking before it was in place I put a layer of wax paper in between the veneer and the floor.
I wanted the floor under the stairs to look unfinished, so I printed out scale color copies of raw press board. Sprayed it with dullcote and glued it down in place.
Some of the pieces were pretty small.
To continue the theme of the understairs being unfinished I printed out a picture of spackled sheet rock and glued it on.
I didn’t care for the door that came with the kit, so I bought a new one in a similar style. The new window didn’t have the same lattice pattern, so I masked off the muntins and sprayed them with white.
I wanted to put down brick in the front of the house, so I cut out 4,248,291 bricks and painted them 5 different colors. All the kit bricks I found online were on the thick side, so I made them myself out of strips of basswood.
Starting the front brick pattern.
Abby gluing down the bricks.
Painting the railings.
To make sure my railing measurements were correct I may or may not have mocked them up first in Softimage.
Abby starting to paint the 7,812,462 shingles.
Making progress on the front bricks.
To grout in between the bricks I grabbed some dirt and sifted it a few times until it was a fine powder.
Brick grout tests.
After applying wood glue in between the bricks I packed on the dirt.
Starting to paint the stones for the chimney. The pieces are hand-cut shapes made from egg carton cardboard.
Egg carton chimney stones.
Starting to apply the shingles. I should have bought stock in painter’s tape.
I don’t have a shop or the proper tools to hold things in place, so here I am in my living room, using workout weights to hold the shingles in place while the silicone glue dries.
I knew I didn’t want to shingle the flat surface of the roof, going for a loose stone look instead. To simulate the effect I walked down the beans and grains aisle at my grocery store, settling on bulgur wheat as my fake rock. Couscous was too small.
The bulgur is stuck down in a flood of wood glue. I was afraid of doing the entire roof in one pass, so I started with the edges, did one side, then the other. This is right before pouring the bulgur for the last section.
If it’s a horizontal surface, it gets bulgur wheat. Once the wood glue dried I vacuumed off the extra.
Painting shingle details.
I needed more chimney stones, so this is me painting a new batch. There are 5 different colors for variety.
Starting to apply the chimney stones.
Of course the window boxes should have dirt and flowers. I used Dow blue foam to sculpt dirt mounds, painting them with glue, and then sprinkling the dirt I used for the front bricks on top.
I wanted the nooks and crannies of the front brick to have some moss-like things going on, so I mixed some green paints in with the sifted dirt, breaking up the dried results into small clumps in my wife’s coffee grinder. (sorry, Mo!)
No, this isn’t weed.
The finished house.
I bought new French doors and handles to replace the ones that came with the kit. I think beautiful little additions like these are what make the house feel like a home.
The kit didn’t come with door or floor trim so I crafted all the molding out of basswood. I love how it makes the portals pop and provide contrast with the dark flooring.
Much of the furniture is from when Abby’s mama had her own dollhouse, but there are always more little treasures to be found to bring the house to life.
Here’s Abby at Tiny Doll House in Manhattan. The miniatures here are amazing.
I love this little café on the front patio. You can picture coming out here with breakfast and coffee, waving hello to neighbors as they pass by on the way to town.
Abby after setting up all the furniture. Nothing has a permanent home - it all depends on whatever story she’s creating that day. My personal favorite is the Haunted Attic. The kids who live in this house get into more trouble than Shaggy and Scooby Doo.
A few shots of the house at sunset… beautiful light. You can almost hear a cozy fire going in the fireplace.
The End