Dollhouse Project: Exterior Walls are Done!

I know my camera skills are not the best, but I think you can still see the progress I’ve made on the exterior walls of the house. I need to put up some fireplace stacks and chimney tops eventually but for now, this is where I’m at.

I plan to move indoors and start putting in flooring on the Ground Floor. I want to do stone in the basement and wine cellar, wooden floors in the back entrance and walk in pantry and tile in the kitchen and washroom. I’m not sure how I’m going to do the tile yet, but the other two I have seen a great many videos on how to do all of it so it’s just a matter of giving it a try myself.

Sorry about the mess. I have a small part of a room for my crafting so things get a bit cluttered and messy at times.

See you on the flipside and don’t forget your towel and sonic screwdriver!!

Dollhouse Project: Second Floor

I know some of the walls are not quite straight, but I didn’t notice it until after everything had dried. Short of tearing it up, the walls will remain a bit crooked. I also know they don’t all line up with each other, but I did this on purpose. Not all rooms in a multi-story house line up with the rooms above and below so why should mine?

This house’s outer walls and roof are being created using new 1/4 Luann while the walls are being cut out of the old walls and roof of the original house. I’m reusing the original base.

I say “we” because my son, J, is helping me with this build. We are using a hand saw because I can’t afford power tools right now. I was gifted with a Dremel 3000, but it’s not going to be used for cutting out walls.

We were using 32 TPI(teeth per inch) metal blades, and they were so hard to get through the wood! At one point, one of them began to bend. I switched us to 24 TPI metal blades, and it’s much easier to cut wood. I was worried the coarser teeth would splinter the wood, but it really hasn’t. What has splintered can be easily sanded, and it’s just the edges, not the main part of the walls.

Right after I took this picture, I added three walls to the third floor. I’m using wood glue to attach everything and nothing else right now. Eventually, I’ll be adding tiny magnets to hold the front wall to the body of the house.

There will be a third floor and an attic with a mansard roof. I am planning on four fireplaces and around four gabled windows.

If anyone has any suggestions for how to shingle the mansard roof where the front meets the sides, I’m all ears.

That’s it for now. I’m working on getting more walls cut for the third floor and for the attic space. After that, I’ll be adding the left side and putting on the roof. The roof is going to be a challenge because I have yet to find a video on how this roof is built in miniature. I’ll be winging it.

See you on the flipside and don’t forget your towel and sonic screwdriver!

Dollhouse Project: First Floor

Just thought I’d show you what we’ve done on the dollhouse thus far. Last time, it looked like this:

and today, it looks like:

I assure you, the floors aren’t crooked, the angle of the photo is. I am not a good photographer, but I’m better than I was this time last year.

So, we have the Ground Floor and the First Floor, just two more floors to go before we get to the Attic.

The First Floor rooms from left to right are: Study, Library, Music Room, Grand Staircase, Sitting Room, and Ballroom.

This project’s framework is being made out of 1/4 Luann and wood glue. I am not using nails or screws anywhere – yet.

The front of the house will be attached with magnets and small screws(or nails depending on what I can find. The roof of the house is going to be a mansard roof.

At present, the production of interior walls has come to a standstill as my son and I look for a better way to cut the wood. The tools and blades that were suggested to me are hard to use. I don’t own any power tools and can’t afford to buy any so everything is being done by hand. If anyone has any suggestions on what to use to cut the wood without splintering it, please leave a comment below.

I’ve already begun making plans for the decorating of the ground floor. Three of the rooms: both cellars and the mudroom, will have stone floors. I might put stone on the washroom floor as well. I’m not sure if the kitchen will have the stone floor as well or get a wooden one.

This is a French Chateau that is being renovated into Modern – for now – but the Ground Floor is keeping it’s original stone floor for the most part. Let me know what you think : stone or wood in the Kitchen??

I realized, belatedly, I forgot to cut a hole for the door into the mudroom – the Tradesman’s entrance as it were. I may just put up a fake one in the room itself if it ends up being too hard to cut one out.

While I hope to have another floor done by next week, we shall just have to see. The tool and blade is hard to work with but not impossible to use.

See you on the flipside and don’t forget your towel and sonic screwdriver!!

Dollhouse Project: Ground Floor

My dollhouse I’m building from scratch has four floors to it, the ground floor is the first. The story for this house is it’s a French Chateau renovated into a modern home, but this is subject to change. Most houses I’ve seen are either some variation of Victorian or Modern. There’s not much else. I welcome all suggestions.

The house will have a ground floor, three floors above and an attic space. I just added the ground floor interior walls and the floor/ceiling.

The rooms are, from left to right: cellar, wine cellar, mudroom/trade entrance, pantry, kitchen and washroom. The angle for the washroom is a bad one, and I do apologize. The ceilings are 4inches tall in 1:24 scale and 8 feet tall in normal scale. 1 inch equals 2 feet. The depth of the walls is 6 inches or 12 feet.

I’m waiting on the next floor to dry else I’d have the rest of the room measurements for you. I’ll give them to you next time.

None of the rooms will perfectly line up with the walls below. Normal houses don’t do that, so my dollhouse rooms won’t either.

I noticed, belatedly, the house is not properly centered on the base, and I left no room on the back for chimneys so they will have to go on the sides of the house. I’d rather not have them hanging off the back of the base.

This is definitely a learning experience for me, and I’m looking forward to doing more to this piece. I am going to be making as much as I can by hand from inexpensive materials. Considering the size, I don’t think it needs more expensive stuff.

Once the frame of the house is done, the front of the house will be held on by magnets. They are really small ones that I will be embedding in the wood and covering up so they’re not pulled out. I had originally thought of hinges, but the correct size ones are too weak to hold much weight. Once the front has all its windows, doors and staircase added, it will a great deal heavier than it it now. Plus, the magnets won’t be seen.

Next week, I should have more floors in. I won’t be putting up the left wall until all the floors are in. The mansard roof will be going on last.

Feel free to leave comments and/or suggestions below. I’d love to hear from you, especially those who have some experience with this sort of thing.

Dollhouse Project: Finally, A Beginning!!

Around the beginning of the year I mentioned wanting to redo a dollhouse I’d bought off Facebook Marketplace :

I’d had to take off one side of the roof to get it to fit into my car it was about 3 feet tall and about as wide. I’m not sure if the scale was 1:12 or 1:6, but it was pretty big.

I decided to redo it because the wood on the walls was splintering in the middle and some of the second floor was cracked. I recently took the entire piece apart:

The piece standing up in the back right corner is the base, and it’s going to stay intact for the new build. The rest will be cut down for interior walls and other bits I can salvage out of it. The wood isn’t of good quality so it’s not going to be used for the exterior of the house.

This wood is 1/4 in Luan, and it was cut by my co-worker, Dennis. The pieces in the back are the back and front pieces. The front is going to be held on by magnets and be removable. I’ll be decorating from the back of the house forward. The house is also going to have a mansard roof.

I’ve decided to do the outside as a French Chateau with the mansard roof, stone façade and a staircase that goes down both sides of the front doors.

The first floor will actually be the basement area, and the second floor will have the entrance to the house.

I would love suggestions on how to decorate the house. I was thinking Regency era for the interior but then again, I could do modern as well. Please, let me know what you think. I’m open to all ideas and suggestions.

Here are the main tools I am going to use:

I’m sure I’ll end up using other tools as well but for the framework, these are the main ones I’ll be using.

I’m not rushing this build. I’m going to let glue dry overnight and do only a piece or two at a time. The only nails in this build will be the ones for the magnets to attach to. I plan to drill holes for the magnets to be glued into on the front wall, and small nails will be inset into the edges of the side walls. These will all be covered up with glue and either paper or something else. This will not only help them blend into the frame of the house, it will also help keep them from pulling out due to the magnetic attraction. Ara from Bentley House Minis talked about this happening during her initial build of the Beetlejuice house.

I’ll show you what I’ve done to the house next week. Tomorrow, I plan to put on the back wall and Thursday, I’ll put up one of the side walls. I also plan to start marking where the first floor room dividers are going to go. Those will need to be cut to size before they can be placed. I’m planning on going out of town Friday, if all goes well with my car’s front end work and thus, I won’t be able to work on the house until I get back.

Still, this will be a welcome break from my stitching and will keep me from getting burned out on it. I hope someone will be as interested in this as I am. This is going to be a long term project as I plan to make as much as I can of the furnishings and only buy what I can’t make myself. This is going to be quite the journey!!

See you on the flipside and don’t forget your towel and sonic screwdriver!!