Do-it-yourself doll house: made of plywood, drywall, PVC, cardboard

Just as boys dream of a treehouse, girls also dream of a dollhouse for their favorite toys. Of course, you can buy it, but a good house costs very obscene money, and you can’t buy a bad child. It’s another thing to do it yourself, but be prepared for the fact that it will take a lot of time. Especially if you don’t have much experience. On average, it will take at least a week to make a house for dolls with your own hands. 

We choose the material

You can make a house for dolls with your own hands from any sheet building material. The thickness of the material for a house about a meter high (two floors) is 9-15 mm, for one-story houses it can be thinner. Consider the most common materials used in the construction of a dollhouse:

• Plywood. An excellent choice, as it is durable, holds its shape well, can be glued, joined with nails and self-tapping screws. They cut plywood with a metal saw (with a fine tooth), a jigsaw (manual or electric). The ends will need to be well sanded so that it is not possible to drive a splinter. Upon completion of work, you can varnish or stain, paint, wallpaper, etc.
  

• Drywall. After the repair, scraps remain, which can be used. To fasten the sheets together, you will need tin corners (you can use a perforated corner). You will have to fasten it with special self-tapping screws, but they will stick out from the back, so this option is not the best. You can try to “plant” on glue, but you will have to align the cut lines to reduce glue consumption.
  

• OSB (OSB). In terms of properties, the material is similar to plywood, with the only difference being that it is moisture resistant and made from wood chips. Work with it in much the same way as with plywood.
  

• Cardboard. The most inexpensive and most delicate material that does not hold loads very well. The situation is better with scrapbooking cardboard (you can buy it in needlework stores). It is more dense and durable, you can make one-story houses or use it for roofing. Connect with glue or staples from a stapler. In order for the doll house to be more reliable, it is better to assemble the frame from the planks, and then cover it with cardboard.
  

• Chipboard plain or laminated (LDSP). The advantage of this material is that it can already be finished. If desired, you can order sawing the entire “box” of the house with gluing the edges in some furniture company. Then all that’s left is to assemble. Moreover, it will be possible to use self-tapping screws or furniture fittings. There are three minuses – the material is too thick, which increases the mass, formaldehyde emissions and brittleness under lateral loads. If you can put up with the thickness and mass, then the release of formaldehyde should not be ignored. It is necessary to search with the emission class E0-E1. With fragility, unfortunately, nothing can be done. Is it possible to use corners to connect parts, and this is not too beautiful.
  

• Furniture boards. They are made from wooden planks glued together with wood glue. Ideal for making a dollhouse: environmentally friendly, durable, easy to process. But furniture panels cannot be called cheap, although they are not as expensive as an array. In any case, it can be taken to make a box – the bottom, side walls and floors. The roof and back wall can be made from other materials (eg fibreboard, plastic, etc.).
  

There are also options such as laminate, wooden lining, thin planed board. But they don’t work that often. In any case, the minimum thickness of materials is 6-7 mm. Then the doll house will be reliable and will withstand even your child.

Features of working with plywood

Most often, plywood is used in the manufacture of a dollhouse. As you probably know, it can be of different brands. It is better to make a dollhouse with your own hands from polished furniture plywood. They can be coniferous, but preferably from birch. It is better not to take a building one, even though it costs twice as much.

In general, plywood is easy to work with. If you have a jigsaw and grinders, cutting and preparing parts will take a couple of hours. The only difficulty that may arise in the manufacture of a two-story plywood doll house is the installation of the second floor floor. T-shaped plywood fastening is not the easiest task.

The glue is not very reliable, and it is difficult to try to install fasteners such as self-tapping screws with a thickness of 6 mm at the end – the material can split, even with pre-drilling holes (the thinnest self-tapping screw is 1,8 mm). There are several options:

• make on nails (not too reliable, except to additionally smear with glue);
• set the corners at the bottom (not very beautiful);
• put a glazing bead around the perimeter, which will both support the floor and “work” as a ceiling plinth (the best option).

After cutting out the parts, all joints must be well sanded. First, they take sandpaper for wood with a medium grain, gradually moving to a fine one. When the edge is smooth, assembly can begin.

dollhouse project

The first thing you need to start building a house for dolls is to create a project. It is necessary to determine the height and number of floors, the width of the room, the type of roof, whether or not there will be a basement floor. Choose the number of floors you want. This is arbitrary, but all other parameters must be calculated.

The size of the doll house depends on the size of the doll inhabitants. To make it convenient to play, the height of the ceilings in the rooms should be at least twice the height of the doll. For example, with a doll height of 22 cm, ceilings of 40-45 cm will give enough space for them to move freely, but if the ceilings are even higher, it will be even more convenient to play. But you also need to take into account the growth of the child. The height of the uppermost overlap should be slightly below eye level. In this case, it will be convenient to play, and the doll house will be “for growth” – it will be enough for a couple of years in height.

The depth of the doll rooms also depends on the height of the dolls, but also on the availability of free space. On average, the depth is 30-45 cm. This is enough to accommodate the entire environment. But it could be deeper.

The width of the dollhouse depends on the number of rooms in it. Here it is determined depending on the available free space. In shape, the frame of a dollhouse usually looks like a rectangle, but now it is elongated in length or in height – this is determined by everyone. If the design turns out to be rather big, furniture wheels can be attached to the bottom. This is very convenient – the toy turns out to be mobile.

You can draw the project itself in any design program, but if you do not own them, it is easier to do it on paper. Why do you need a dollhouse project? To calculate the amount of materials needed for its manufacture, and without the size and number of walls, you will definitely be mistaken.

Finishing features

Decorating a doll house with your own hands raises no less questions than building. In principle, you can use the same finishing method as in apartments or houses. For example, in doll rooms, walls can be finished in the following ways:

• Paint. Only paint must be taken special, which is allowed for use in children’s and medical institutions. It can be any type of composition, but the best choice, perhaps, is water-based washable paint. It is not too expensive, does not smell when painted, can be wiped off, and is easily tinted in any color.
• Paste wallpaper. If you have plain wallpaper left from the repair, this is a good option. But the remains with a pattern are unlikely to fit, since the pattern is usually too large for miniature rooms. For such a case, you can find a wallpaper sample on the Internet and print it on a color printer. Using the same technology, by the way, you can make “linoleum” or “parquet” – print, stick, cover at least with a layer of PVA. For full plausibility, use varnish or epoxy.
  

If you chose the “wallpaper” option, it’s easier to do this before the assembly step. Even if there are several floors, blanks are lined, wallpaper is glued. This is much easier than trying to paste over the corners later.

The exterior finish is not much different. The most commonly used paint. This is the best option in terms of practicality and labor costs. If you want, you can do something similar to decorative plaster. It can be imitated with gray toilet paper. You just have to choose more. It is torn into pieces, glued with PVA diluted with water (1 to 1), laid out on the walls, forming the desired relief. After drying, you can paint using acrylic paints. This is a decoupage technique and can be used with colored or regular napkins.

Window and door decoration

Cutting windows in plywood, OSB, or any other material is not such a problem. To begin with, using a drill and a drill, make a hole into which you can pass the saw blade. Next is a matter of technology. The cut hole is polished, bringing it to smoothness, and then it is necessary to make the holes made look like windows. For this you need frames, curtains. If desired, you can also make glass – from transparent plastic bottles.

Frames with bindings can be made of white cardboard. Stick them after the completion of the “finishing work”. Children love to open / close doors, so it’s best to make them from thin plywood. Fasteners can be found – there are piano hinges or small furniture ones. Bolts can be made from wire and thin tubes.

Let there be light!

A dollhouse with lighting is aerobatics. Moreover, there is no need to fence the system of wires, converters, light bulbs and other electrical “stuffing”. There is a very simple and effective solution. In any more or less large lighting store there are small LED lamps powered by batteries. And they are mounted on Velcro. Each lamp is equipped with its own switch, operates on a voltage of several volts. In general, a very good output.

If you still want to make a real light in the dollhouse, you need a 220/12 V converter or a battery with the appropriate voltage. You will also need light bulbs or an LED strip for the appropriate denomination, a bunch of wires. In general, this path is much more difficult and requires a lot more time, but it is also a possible option.

How to make a roof

If the roof is planned to be ordinary – gable, the layout of the attic space or attic floor should be done so that there is a partition in the center that will support the roof at the junction of the two halves of the roof. This is the easiest way. There are also more complex ones.

If you need a roof of complex shape, we cut out several rafters from plywood, which will set the shape. We attach them to the walls, sheathe them with some flexible material. It can be cardboard, fiberboard. The ends of the rafters are coated with glue (better – carpentry), after which the material is laid. If the bend is too steep, additional fasteners may be needed. Usually thin small carnations are used, like shoe studs.

Photo options for different dollhouses

Building a house for dolls is a creative process. It can be made the way you dream of seeing your home, recreate a house from a fairy tale or fantasy. And there are no restrictions. Everything you want and how you want.