A DOLLHOUSE!

Intro: A DOLLHOUSE!

Two or three months before my granddaughter’s birthday, I started thinking about a nice present for her. She was always talking about a dollhouse during the short trips back home from school. So I decided to make her a surprise and build her a dollhouse from scratch.

STEP 1: Gathering the Materials...

So I started looking for some material I might have to make it.

And I found several squares of wood hardboard. The measured around 39 x 37 so I decided I had enough boards to make the house.

I made some indentations so they could form a type of cross by interconnecting them. Then I put them together with one for the bottom, one for the top and two other boards for lateral walls. This way they would form eight different rooms, two downstairs and two upstairs on each side.

Then I decided that it had to have a roof because as it was, it didn’t look nice. As the house was practically a cube, the roof had to be a pyramid hip roof.

Then I realized that I hadn´t made any doors between the different rooms, so I took it apart again and cut the doors between all the different spaces.

It looked much better now!

STEP 2: Painting and Preparing the Gift!

Then I painted the exterior walls white and the roof red.

And it was finished a week before my granddaughter's birthday. I bought a large cardboard box and gave it to her for her birthday.

She loved it and from then on all her playing was around the house. But I noticed that it had a problem: the rooms were too dark to play in the evening because they were full of shadows and I hadn’t thought of illumination.

STEP 3: Illumination!

So I asked for her permission to take it back in order to create a system to make it bright with lights. I bought some led tapes, wire and I invented a system so that there would be independent lighting in each room of the house: 8 in total.

So I bought a small wood box, small switches used in electronics and using my soldering iron I created it from scratch as you can see in the pictures.

The dollhouse was completely illuminated now, and my granddaughter could use each of the rooms independently, without lighting them all.

I had an old 12v transformer, bought the necessary electric socket and that was it!

STEP 4: Trying It Out!

And here you can see a short movie of the switches

functioning!

Comments

[TanyaD4]

You'll probably hate me for the road I'm about to point you down, but you can get some ROCKIN' furniture and other accessories (like fancy door and window frames, as well as staircases) from Wish.com.
You just have to search for "dollhouse furniture" and you will be flooded with all sorts of stuff!
It will blow your mind! You can even specify what ratio you are looking for, as furniture comes in a few sizes.
Size 1:12 is the most common, and I think? yours looks about that size, so I think that'd fit ok. This size fits well with such doll sets as Sylvanian Families.(flocked humanoid woodland animals) Very cute, but very expensive.
And hey, if not...you can always make a second one! :D
I'm in my 40's, but always wanted to make one of these...just for ***** and giggles. It looks like a lot of fun! Thanks for being an inspiriation! <3

[jcrispimromao]

Well, I have to thank you for your advice, but I intend these works as a means to make my granddaughter interested in building things. Because, at the end of the day, we must have some hobby just to balance our emotional status as this covid 19 lock down makes us stay indoors and won't allow us to go out and spend time with friends. So one of my goals is to create all the furniture together with my granddaughter as she is the one who is going to tell me what she wants and how she wants it. But making this dollhouse was a lot of fun! With this information that you gave me, I may be looking around for ideas to create my own furniture! :D