Dollhouse Makeover - The Structure

 Dollhouse Makeover - The Structure

Whoever the person was that suggested that "diamonds are a girl's best friend", clearly never witnessed the love between a little girl and her dollhouse. I would definitely like to rectify that statement and conclude that:

A DOLLHOUSE IS A GIRL'S BEST FRIEND!

These days dollhouses are a massive expenditure, not even mentioning the furniture and accessories that go with it. 

A few years ago, while I was on maternity leave with my second little wild child, I bought a dollhouse on Facebook Marketplace for my older daughter. I admit, I got it for quite a steal, but it did have some damage and wasn't in the greatest condition. The dollhouse also came with some furniture - to my luck. 

To keep myself busy during my maternity leave, as I tend to get a bit stir crazy, I decided to revamp the dollhouse and make it more appealing. My husband refused to let me paint the dollhouse, as I was pregnant when I started and apparently that is a taboo, so I ended up covering the walls with vinyl, to cover the printed backgrounds and exterior.

Since the floors were a bit damaged, I tiled two of the rooms and did one of the other floors with craft sticks for a laminated floor look. I also modge podged some scrapbooking paper to the walls to serve as wallpaper. 

This dollhouse served it's purpose well for many years, until recently after moving to Cape Town and living close to the ocean, the backboard of the dollhouse started to show signs of mold. Since I've been wanting to revamp the dollhouse for quite a while now, I immediately decided that this would be the perfect time (and excuse) to do so. 

The first thing I did was to remove the spoilt backboard, as well as the one floor which was covered with cork. The cork had started to lift and make bubbles, so I simply ripped it out with a satisfied smile. 

I also knew that I somehow wanted to make the dollhouse a bit smaller, as it was so big that it covered half of the window in my daughter, Luna's room. I didn't know how to do this though, so...

I took to Pinterest, as I always do, in search of some inspiration. I found so many inspiring ideas, and nearly gave up before even starting. Everything I saw was just to beautiful and I knew I would not be able to pull it off, especially with trying to spend as little as possible, or even nothing if I could. 

But, I put on my big girl panties and set to work:

What I used:

White paint

Craft sticks

Leftover artificial grass

Leftover vinyl

Scrapbooking paper

Piece of carpet

Dish drying mat

Lots and lots of glue!

I started by taking the dollhouse apart and sanding off any leftover bits of vinyl and paper for a smooth start before painting. 

Unfortunately I didn't have any white paint, so I had to buy some. I decided to buy the cheapest paint I could find, a decision I would definitely regret later on. Four layers later, it all still looked incredibly stripy, and my dad suggested that the paint I bought, which was decorative paint, is suppose to look like you had a few glasses of wine too many while you were painting. Since I did not feel that it would be a good idea to have my daughter's dollhouse look like her mom was under the vineyard when she painted, I opted to buy better paint - acrylic.

The decision paid off, and the painting process hit its stride with the new paint. Luna joined in on the fun, and it turned out to be a fun mom and daughter painting afternoon. 

After the painting was done and dusted, I needed to decide how to make the house smaller. With the help of my ever helpful partner in crime (my hubby), we removed the top floor and roof and cut it smaller, making one bigger room. We reassembled the house and placed the top room on the side, not in the middle, to create a patio, instead of the two smaller verandas. 

Hubby had some extra backboard in the garage, so he cut them to size for me and we added them to the newly shaped dollhouse. 

Next up, the floors and walls. 

I had no idea how to remove the tiles and craft stick floors, so I decided to keep them instead. One of my neighbors was kind enough to give me a piece of carpet she had, which eventually became the living room floor. The bedroom floor got a carpet look finish, created with a dish drying mat I bought from Pep Home. 

I covered the patio with some leftover artificial grass and glued this in place with my glue gun. 

I covered the kitchen backwall with grey vinyl and created a wood paneling look with craft sticks and painted it white. 

For the bathroom, I cut some of the scrapbooking paper into strips to make it look like a patterned tile around the whole room. 

I used the scrapbooking paper for wallpaper in the rest of the rooms, using modge podge to secure it to the wood. 

In the living room, I added some detail by cutting larger craft sticks in half and painting them grey. I glued these along the bottom part of the back wall. 

I also used some smaller craft sticks, with the rounded tips cut off and painted white, as skirtings around the walls of the whole house. 

For the outside, I built some flower boxes from craft sticks, and cut some artificial grass into strips to put inside. I had some sunflowers left from an Easter bonnet I made a while back and placed them inside the boxes as well. 

And all done, the inside and outside of the dollhouse structure was now complete. Next step was to take it room by room and add the furniture and detail...