Planning a Dollhouse

When I was about 12 my dad built my sister (and I who was technically getting too old but was completely in love with it anyways) a dollhouse, six beautiful rooms of wood.  I got wallpaper books and old rug samples from the local Home Depot, I painted and glued... I Loved It.

So the second I found out I was having a little girl I started begging my husband for a dollhouse for her.  He laughed and said, "can we have the baby first dear, I think she'd like a name before she'd like a dollhouse."

She-she is turning 3 in October, and we've decided we'll make her a dollhouse for Christmas.  My hubby, ever the perfectionist in planning when it comes to building insisted he know exactly what I wanted.  And thus the following sketches were created.  (Please pardon the poor perspective lines.) 

Some mild adjustments have been made (the depth of the house is now 12 inches instead of 14 inches as originally planned to save money for the better wood.)

I designed my dollhouse in my head and with paper and pen first, but my husband wanted it "even more clear" so I went to the computer program Paint.  Yes really, paint does scale!  I drew it out in minutes, and we discussed at length what materials we'd use and designs we'd incorporate.

The actual construction has also been broken down into parts because I don't want my daughter to know about it (Christmas present after all!) So I'll be doing a lot of the actual assembly and finishing work in late November.

I have a rough time line of what I want done by when in my head and have told my husband (who is helping me with the wood working) the specific dates he needs to know.

We started actual construction by doing the two outer walls as they had the most detail with the actual piece and there is no point in building a bunch of furniture with no house!  Each wall has a window on the second floor and a door on the first, and being the nut I am I insisted on carving the doors to add that extra pop.

THE OUTER WALLS

WHAT WE USED:
Skil Cordless Jig Saw
Hand Power Sander
$8 piece of 72x12x1 inch board ripped in two 36x12x1 inch boards
A Ruler
A Tape Measure
A Compass (For the rounded archway of the French doors)
2 Hand Clamps

Together we measured out the dimensions we needed on the wall using a pencil.  Note the one inch width of the board is measured on the walls so we can see the placement of the floors.  If you want a house that's 42 inches tall it will lose a bit on each floor because of the wood thickness.  We then found the center and built the doors out from that. Originally I had them measured for 8 inches wide, 4 inches per door, however with the reduced dimensions we dropped them to 3 inch wide doors, 6 inches total.  Because we are building for fashion dolls (Barbies) who stand 11.5 inches tall we did our doors 12.5 inches tall.

The doors Scott (my gorgeous hubby!) is cutting in the photo to the right are the french doors that lead to the living room (or the fancy room, ball room, throne room, or whatever she imagines!) and are cut with our Skil Jig Saw, he took particular care in the curves, easing it slowly.  (The black hose is the shop vac picking up the dust so he can see the lines easier.)

On the opposite side we did a dutch door that will go from the kitchen to the garden.  A dutch door is a door that opens in two pieces, the upper piece and the lower piece each on their own hinges.  (See the link for an example).  We also used the Jig on it, cutting the door in half upon removal of the wall.  To avoid a large knot we shifted that door towards the front of the dollhouse.

The windows were a tad bit trickier as Scottie did a plunge cut on them, on each side as turning corners was impossible and we wanted the window in the center of a single piece of wood.  It took a little bit of time, but they came out cleanly and easily.

Also in order to avoid knots in the wood we adjusted the sizes of our windows.

The final step that night (before painting and detail work etc.) was sanding.  We used a 1/4 sheet power sander similar to this one.  Since the wood was new we didn't have to remove any stain or lacquers and it took only a few minutes to "buff out" the corners and sharp edges.  We chose a nicer wood so that I would never have to worry about my daughter getting splinters.

We now have two "walls," four "doors," and two "windows" cut and sanded and ready for assembly.  Both walls were cut from a single 72 inch board at 36 inches.  The board was around $7.50 I think.



***Psst!!  The window pieces that we cut from the two walls have gone toward the doll bed we are making for the toddler/child room, and only required a bit of touching up and trimming.  Never throw out chunks of wood as that bed is now free!***