How To Make A Doll House

Here’s how to make a doll house. You don’t need to spend money on a pattern and it uses scrap construction materials and an old bookshelf. We made this to fit 18 inch dolls like the american girl doll or the knock offs at Target and Walmart.

How To Make A Doll House

Video Transcript – How To Make A Doll House

“This is Joquena, and today I’m gonna show you how to build a dollhouse, or at least how we built ours. And this for like the 18 inch, if you can afford them, the American Girl (ahem, we can’t) dolls. So we’re gonna give you a little room-by-room tour here of what we did for the esthetic stuff, and then I’m gonna have my husband explain the boring structural stuff, because that wasn’t my department. So, I really wish we’d shot this video 2 years ago, because that’s when we made this, and this has been played hard with, it’s, you know, it’s seen its better days, and we’re actually gonna be converting it to a Barbie house now, but…what we did, we’ll start with the bathroom over here, this used to have a bathtub, they broke it. A lot of our furniture, we have taken like the Target brand stuff, like this beauty chair was on clearance at one point. This towel rack is actually just, like, a cabinet handle. So that was like a, I dunno, thirty cents type thing, and he just screwed it in from the side, and they can hang their clothes on there, and their towels and whatever. The paint for all of the rooms was just paint we had on hand, paint from their bedroom and paint from other rooms, so that was pretty fun. Didn’t spend a single penny on paint, we just used what we had. I mean, you could totally customize this, you could do scraps of wallpaper that you had, you use do scrapbook paper, I mean, instead of wallpaper, and just, you know, if you didn’t want to use paint, and totally customize it. I did different floor in every single room, once again reflective of stuff we had leftover from our house. This, if you look real close here, this is tile that we used in our bathroom, and a couple of pieces got broken. Once again, they play hard. And, I’ll shift on to another room here, so, this was just something we had that I didn’t want anymore that they kind of use as a closet. I could have painted it pink, but they broke the door off pretty early on, so that took away the desire. Over here, we have the kitchen, and once again, paint we already had. This was a birthday present from their grandma. I think it was like fifty dollars, so that was a nice birthday present. And, this down here is black paint with flecks in it. We have that in our basement ‘cause we have concrete, so, you know, don’t do anything special, just use what you have around. If you were to go out and buy stuff, this is what I would recommend. This is peel-and-stick tile, and all you have to do to put it on there is cut it to size with a razor blade, and for us it was exactly the width of the shelf, so he only had to make like one cut on the side; it was perfect. And then I painted flowers, and you can see my graffiti artist has added all sorts of her own decorations up on the roof and whatever, so…I will switch over to my husband, and he can tell you the boring structural stuff, but don’t spend money on a super expensive dollhouse. Spoiler alert–this is a bookshelf, a used bookshelf that we had left over that we didn’t need. That was what we started with, and I’ve seen patterns for dollhouses, like blueprints, that cost at least thirty dollars. Dollhouses well over a hundred dollars, or they’re made out of paper, which doesn’t last in our house. This baby is wood and tile, and it was meant to endure all of the abuse that is heaped upon it.”

“Okay, so Joquena wanted me to talk a little bit about how we made this. Probably the biggest thing that I can tell you about this is that I learned as I did it, I had no clue what I was doing. So, I would say that’s the biggest encouragement I can give you is even if you don’t know what you’re doing and you’re just grabbing random pieces of wood and slapping them together and painting them, I mean, that’s pretty much what I did. I mean, basically, in a nutshell, this bottom part is a bookshelf that we laid on its side, and I cut it, you know, so that it would be the length that I wanted it to be, and I fastened in this middle shelf here to use as a wall, now the hardest part was…Alright, these were just some leftover boards that we had in our shed. We’ve got a bunch of just scrap wood in our shelf. I believe these are just leftover subfloor pieces, and what we did was I took this big flat piece and laid it down and then laid these on top of it like this and traced so that I would know exactly where to cut so I would get this triangle shape that was exactly the right shape to fit these on. And then, we’re gonna turn this around so that you can see the back, well actually right here you can see where the screws are. We just put in some phillips screws right there, and again on the side here going into this floor.”

“You can see a nice gap on the side, you know, the kids have yet to point out any structural issues with their dollhouse, they’ve loved it.”

“So, now we’re looking at the back of the dollhouse. You can see how this was done again. It’s this big triangle piece that was cut to fit. And where this is mainly holding together is these screws on the side is what’s the primary thing that’s holding this top piece on. There is a little bit of additional support, it’s not much but I tried to just do what I could. I took some of these little, I’m not even exactly sure what these things are called, these are what you like tack up wires with, and I just nailed those in so that it would provide a little extra support, so it’s going into each side. And that’s pretty much it, you know, again…”

“The backboard itself is attached all the way around, though. Let me look…”

“Do what?”

“You’ve screwed the backboard all the way around. You can see a screw every inch or so, or every foot or so. But it’s two separate pieces in the back, that makes it easier than trying to cut that one perfect shape, and it allows you to use scraps, I mean…”

“So if you do one like ours, even if you try to get as close as you can, it’s not gonna be exactly like ours because, you know, the scraps that you have might be different, paint colors you have, I mean, whatever you do, we strongly recommend that you use what you have, you know, use any scrap wood that you have, any leftover paint that you have. We didn’t buy anything new for this, I don’t think. Didn’t we just use…?”

“Three peel-and-stick tiles.”

“Three peel-and-stick tiles. Okay, so that’s all that we bought. Everything else was just stuff that we already had. Now, if you’re like us and you’ve been doing a lot of remodeling on your house, you might, you know, already have a lot of scrap wood. If you don’t have any, I would try to get some used or get some from a friend who’s been doing a remodeling project rather than getting a bunch of new stuff, so…anyway, that’s the whole point is to save money and use what you have, so, that’s pretty much what we did. Oh, one thing I want to point out, a couple of things, actually, one thing I recommend doing, and I did not do it on this, and I regret it, you can see by these scratches on our floor because of our kids, but you want to put like some felt on the bottom of this so that it’s not going to scratch up your floor, especially if you have a hardwood floor. Put some felt on there just like you would with any furniture, it’s a good idea. And then finally, the biggest thing is, you wanna, this thing’s really heavy, and especially if you have smaller kids, you wanna fasten this into the wall. Like, find a stud and fasten it to the wall with a screw or something just so it’s sturdy so that your kids aren’t gonna be able to pull it on top of themselves.”

“Yeah, just like a bookshelf, you want it attached to the wall, ‘cause it could crush someone, and that would not be fun, that would be the opposite of fun. So, anyway, save money, dollhouse of your girls’ dreams.”

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baby changing mat pattern

“Today we’re gonna make a changing table. There’s a free pattern on the website, look at the link below. But it’s really easy sewing pattern, so if you’re a beginner sewer, don’t be afraid. And it’s vinyl on the inside, and I used upholstery fabric on the outside ‘cause I had leftovers, but you can just use cotton, so keep watching, you’ll see how!”

“The first thing you need to do is go to Modern Homemakers, follow the link below in the video description if you’re on YouTube, and print off your free pattern pieces, and there are four pieces, A-B-C-D…I know, I was really original in naming them.