Two months ago the little girl asked for a doll house for Christmas. Her collection and current interest is mostly Barbie. Instead of buying her a cheap, plastic, commercial doll house, I thought it would be a good idea to get my feet wet with woodworking and make her something that could last long enough to pass down to her children. Before this, I had never taken on a “from scratch” woodworking project. But thanks to BYOAC and the wealth of knowledge shared by its members, I had the confidence to try something new (that, and I really wanted some practice before starting a jukebox build next year).
I searched the Sketchup Warehouse for examples, and found one design that I liked and looked fairly straight forward to build. It was a three level house, but the floors were too short for Barbie to stand up in. I made some adjustments to the dimensions and came up with a doll house that is 48” tall, 42” wide, and 18” deep. I settled on ½” MDF to build the house out of.
Although I have plenty of mechanic’s tools, my woodworking tool selection is pretty slim. I started this project with only a circular saw, drill, router, and a scroll saw I purchased solely with the intent of making doll furniture with (I used a jigsaw too, but that was borrowed). Since I don’t have a fancy table saw (yet), and based on some advice I’ve seen time and again on here, I had to build a saw board to get things started.
It worked out just fine for what I needed to do, but I will definitely be buying a table saw in the future. Here are the first pieces cut out.
Threw some windows in with the jigsaw.
I had been planning on how I was going to assemble the doll house, and decided just glue would be good enough. However, I only have two clamps and they’re not big enough for this project. Lowes had a sale on brad nailers ($25), and I figured this was more cost efficient than buying more clamps (gotta love new tools too).
Up to this point I was working on this in my garage, but then the little girl started to get curious and I had to move operations over to my parents’ poorly lit basement. Assembly begins. Here’s the main floor and basement walls glued to the back.
That brad nailer made short work of the assembly. Top floor and rest of the walls glued in place. Roof and base just placed for reference.
Here’s where the scroll saw came in handy. Cutting the stairs took longer than the whole house. Here’s the upper staircase curing. Sides are ½” MDF and the stairs themselves are 3/16” birch ply (but the lumber store calls it ¼”).
Stairs installed.
Also made a chimney and roof support beam.
Painted the whole thing with two coats of white paint (about 2/3 of a gallon). Then it was time to paint the walls. The wife picked out the colors and helped out with the wall painting. The colors are just acrylic craft paints, two coats each as well.
Painted the roof and started laying down the flooring. Here’s the tile in the bathroom.
Finished up laying the carpet and painting the chimney and garage floor today. Pretty much done, just need to trim the outside edges of the carpet (shaggy felt) tomorrow once the glue dries.
I’ll move the doll house into a spare bedroom and take a couple of better pics tomorrow. This thing is pretty big and heavy, still trying to figure out how I want to surprise the little girl. She’s going to love it, and I can’t wait to see her face when she sees it for the first time. The wife will be making curtains for it this weekend if all goes as planned.
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Topic: BYODH - My First Attempt At Woodworking (Read 6693 times)
