Order of play for the dolls house conversion

These are the steps I am taking to convert an IKEA bookcase into a dolls house for my three year old daughter.

1. Add room dividers.
2. Add temporary furniture and accessories.
3. Add lighting.
4. Add wall paper.
5. Add flooring.
6. Add some windows.
7. Make extras - bedding, rugs, pictures.
8. Add the real furniture (Go Ebay crazy!)
9. Add the dolls!

The aim was for it to be a basic useable dolls house from day one, but also to form part of the Christmas present this year. I knew I would not be able to complete steps 1-7 the night before Christmas (!!) so chose to let Sweetie see and help me with the initial creation. She's happy with it so far and loves to play with it.

The funny thing is, she's three: I could have saved myself a fortune (OK, not a fortune but something) and some effort by just emptying off the books and telling her it was a dolls house.  But it wouldn't be the same.

If you haven't already, Google homemade dolls house, also recycled dolls house, book case dolls house and cardboard dolls house, for lots more inspiration.  And for pure fantasy, check out The Dolls House Emporium.  Hours of happy browsing there!

Wall paper time

I was going to use scrapbooking paper for the dolls house walls, but caved in when I saw some gorgeous miniature dolls house wall paper sold by the sheet on Ebay.  When they arrived they were even more beautiful than I expected, and made of thick heavy quality paper.. basically just like real wallpaper!

It was obvious that I had under estimated how much I would need.  I had thought of just papering the back wall, but then the cardboard room dividers would still show, faintly, Sultana Bran, which was not the look I was aiming for.

Another Ebay order has now been placed.

If you search for dolls house wallpaper on Ebay you will find more designs than you ever imagined.  The lady I bought them from combined P&P on multiple orders too, so it was not as expensive as it might have been - around £1.20 a sheet, and each sheet was around 18 inches by 12 inches.

I could have measured, pasted the walls and done all those things the 'real' dolls house makers do.  I didn't though.  I just offered up the paper to the wall, cut off roughly the shape and Scotch taped it on with double sided tape. Done.

It looked so good that I now want special bathroom paper for the bathroom too.  Maybe something gardeny for the bottom shelf, which is still in limbo as I can't work out what would be best for it.

I spent far too much time looking at tiny dolls house papers, especially the fabulous retro designs.  If I do a dolls house for myself one day, it will be decorated a la my parents' house,1976.

 Steps:
1. Find suitable paper - scrap, wrapping or (ahem) specialist dolls house wallpaper. Small print designs look best.
2. Decide which parts of your walls to paper. Just large squares can look effective, as if the room has cornicing and large skirting boards.  Or you cna go the whole hog.
3. Cut to size.
4. Tape in place. I didn't fancy glue on my smooth bookcase surface - don't think it would stick. Plus this way we can repaper easily later on!
5.  Press firmly into the corners.  If you have rounded corners they are vulnerable to being split.
6. Forget about it being perfect. It might not be perfect, but it will be done, and that's the important part. (see FlyLady for more on avoiding crippling perfectionism...)

Lighting for the dolls house

Phase Two is lighting. I looked for more pound shop battery operated LEDs - but because this is Christmas, the only ones are either in funky colors, which is not what I want, icicle shaped -hmm.. - or mains powered, not suitable for a cardboard-walled-dolls house.

 So I coughed up £6.99 for the nice white ones I liked at our local garden centre (and Christmas light emporium). They had clear wire too, which is handy as I won't be able to hide it all.

 Here's the plan: the bookcase, which has seen a bit of life, has a bowed-out back leaving a gap between the back wall of the dolls house and the floors, or shelves. I could fix this but instead I'm going to use it to run lights between floors. The lights themselves will poke through holes in the cardboard-box room dividers. Again, I could have drilled into the back of the bookcase for this.. but that would involve actual work.

 I placed the battery pack on the ground floor, then ran lights up to the top. I kind of had to do this in reverse to check that the tops ones could reach, before doing the middle floor. I had to untape the room dividers but I'd only lightly taped them in to start with.

 Then I poked holes in the cardboard and stuck the lights through. I taped them slightly into place, predicting three-year-old fun with pushing them into the (soon to be wallpapered) walls and vanishing forever.

 Switch them on and hey presto, a lit dolls house. Thanks to this lovely blog for inspiring me to even try a lit home made dolls house! It also has brilliant ideas for lampshades too.

Steps:
1. Get LED battery operated lights on a string.
2. Untape room dividers and feed lights inside and up the gap between the shelves and the bookcase back.
3. Stab holes where you would like lights to appear.  I did 2 on each side of the room dividers.
4. Poke lights through.
5. Tape room dividers back down. Tape lights into position to prevent them being pushed in by 'accident', ie by children.
6. Work out where to hide the battery pack later. (!)
7. Have fun switching on lights and then switching them off at doll bedtime.

Wooden block furniture for dolls house

Just some pics of the simple furniture I made out of building blocks that we already had. I also added a lampshade made out of a baby's bottle teat protector which Sweetie had already decorated with some stickers. Looked great!

 Bathroom:

Lounge, with sofa and TV: (looks very blue because of the fairy lights!)

Bedroom with little beds:

Finally, the thing that gave me the idea of blocks in the first place - the 'kitchen' (not much like a kitchen yet I know) , plus stairs:

Dolls house bookcase conversion

After seeing a nice but very expensive dolls house in the Early Learning Centre, I had a brainwave. The dolls house was basically just some white shelves, plus extras like a lift and some printed backgrounds. They wanted a hundred pounds for this item.

 OK, it was nice, but it was just  a bookcase with bits in. If I got a dolls house for Sweetie, I would have to find somewhere to put it.Also: I have a bookcase which I've been meaning to tidy up for ages, which already has a place to live. Aha!

 With a small amount of work and two cereal boxes from the recycling, the basic dolls house was born. We added some fairy lights and a light up Christmas tree from the pound shop, and out in some 'furniture' made from wooden building blocks. Voila!


 Sweetie was thrilled. I was amazed how this simple box inside out plus Sellotape was able to create a thing that was obviously no longer a bookcase, but a dolls house.

 Brilliant! More pics of the next phase soon.


Steps:
1. Find cereal boxes of about the right height to be room dividers.
2. Turn boxes inside out.
3. Tape them into position. I splayed out the flaps on the bottom of the boxes to give them more stability. **Note: don't make this too final as you will want to add 'proper' lighting, later. See later posts for this!**
4. Add some building block furniture.  The toilet was a particular hit.
5. Add some battery operated LED fairy lights.
6. Marvel at this simple yet effective transformation!