How To Build A Dollhouse

Like most little girls of 6 years, our daughter loves to play with dolls, but not the big dolls like barbies or Journey dolls - she loves to play with miniature size toys. Like Olivia family, miniature dolls and of course her little ponies! (All of you who have kids would know what I am talking about!!! LOL!)! For Christmas she wanted a doll house. And although my husband and I are not the typical DIYers (but hubby dear is good with tools - what a blessing to have a handy man around;-)), we both thought it'd be fun to build a wooden doll house for Mili.  After searching a lot of craft/home improvement blogs, we found some great suggestions (here, here and here) and decided to make our own doll house! We closely followed the amazing house improvement/DIY blog Young House Love for the dimensions and decorations, but we added an extra shelf to make the doll house taller for Mili's height. (Well, more square footage never hurt no homeowner, right!!)

So on Christmas, 'Santa' delivered the supplies (with a letter explaining Mili  how her dad can make a doll house out of wood pieces!) dad built it and Mom decorated it. The furniture came from ebay! I had so much fun finishing this project and my husband still suspects I wanted the doll house more than Mili!! 

The doll house is almost 3 feet tall with raised ceilings at the top floor! (We had a good realtor!)

For the building process, my husband drew the dimensions, got the wood pieces cut to desired length from home depot, and glued and nailed the pieces together! (For details, please follow directions at Young House Love)
The big plywood board was nailed in the back to finish the structure. Easy peasy!:-)

Then it was mom's turn to paint two coats of white water based latex indoor paint with a roller and a small brush for hard to reach corners. Then a trip to carft store to buy some decorative paper in different designs for the 'wall paper'. I got 14 (12x12 size) papers from AC Moore, cut them to size measuring each 'room' back wall and stuck the paper with modpodge. I also sealed the paper by putting a layer of modpodge on it.

Here is the finished doll house!

Then started the search for perfect furniture! I was lucky to find a great lot of mixed furniture in excellent condition on ebay for $50. I am so in love with house! Sigh!

I wish my dresser was as organized and ornate!

Baby says hi!

We had to have a ballerina somewhere in the house!;-)

The contemporary furniture is actually a set of erasers! (for 77 cents for one set - we got 2 sets for this room) although Olivia's dad looks giant with it! :-) But hey, he got an option to sit down in another 'sitting room' on the velvet upholstered chair (Fancy!)!!

The kitchen is still work in progress, we need to find a good size refrigerator - still making do with 'basement-bar-sized' one that came with the eraser set! LOL! 

The clawfoot tub and golden faucets! C'est magnifique!

Now the big question - WHERE IS THE FOOD? 

So now you know why have I been slow to post since the holidays!! I spend way too much time playing with my daughter and her doll house!

How do you like our attempt to build a doll house?

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