Dollhouse Renovation

Back when I was…oh, not really sure how old…ten or so, I received a dollhouse kit as a Christmas gift from my parents. I believe that this was given to me after I had started making my own dollhouse out of a cardboard box and cardboard accessories. Dad did most of the work on assembling the dollhouse, as I recall, but I know I helped at least some anyway….

I spent many hours playing with that dollhouse. I received a lot of dollhouse furniture as Christmas and birthday gifts back then and had a very nicely furnished Victorian dollhouse for quite a while. Of course, I eventually stopped playing with it and it has followed me around through a few moves, sitting in garaged and collecting dust and mud dauber nests.

So recently I remembered that it existed and I decided that I wanted to fix it up. Can’t remember what prompted this, but that’s not important.

I still have a LOT of work to do, but wanted to put up some pictures of my progress so far. Things are starting to come together….

First step was cleaning the house, and re-gluing everything together. Hot garages aren’t good for glue and the house was feeling very flimsy.

After gluing and cleaning, I decided to add a stone foundation to the house. I did this by cutting pieces of styrofoam into rectangles, and painting them a stone color. I then glued them to the house —

After the glue was mostly set, I added the mortar. Which I bought off of Amazon – very convenient.

The mortar in this picture isn’t totally dry – it’s much lighter in color now.

After finishing this, I removed the plastic “windows” and sanded down the frames. I have to figure out what kind of window I’ll install, but I’m still weighing my options…. I also removed the wallpaper and carpet from the inside of the house so that I could prime everything and redecorate later.

Picture on the left was after I painted the attic and the room on the left; picture ont he right is after I’d finished with the interior. I’m not going to paint the floor as I’ll be putting down hardwood panels later. Er, soon – that’s actually next on my agenda.

This is just a picture to give you an idea of how the floor panels will fit. These are popsicle sticks which I’ve modified a lot – and have a lot more modifying to do before I can glue everything in. I got some stain and polyurethane the other day though, and am excited about how this is going to turn out!!

This last picture is how I left the house last night. This is with two coats of primer (except the front porch which is trickier to get to). I’m leaning towards leaving the house white and painting the trim brown…..but I haven’t quite decided yet.

Really excited about finishing up the floor and the painting so that I can start decorating the interior of the house!! Want to glue the window box in soon too, and work on the window installations. I’m thinking of doing a stained glass panel on the front door. We’ll see……