The Doll House I Always Wanted, but didn't know I could just make it myself.
Not too long ago I picked up my old Barbie doll house from my mother's old house, she was moving out and needed me to get as much of my old stuff as I could. I wasn't able to get most of my old dolls, but I was able to get the house my dad made and my mom painted. He was a carpenter and made my doll house from scrap lumber he got at job sites. My mom used scraps of fabric for the floor rugs and stitched up some pillows for beds and a couch. I think I used to use little boxes for kitchen stuff. Later on I got a big Barbie kitchen that fit, but not very easy to use in the house.
Well I've been working on it, slowly but surely. I painted some gesso on the walls and I think I'm going to work on painting them different colors later. I saw some carpet scraps in one of the closets that I might cut to fit the living room and bedroom floors. I'm not sure about the kitchen. I'm debating between laying down contact paper, gluing down wood strips for a wood floor look, or cutting tiny squares of paper or contact paper and gluing each one down for a tile look. If I do the tile look, I think I'll glue whatever I use down to mat board and fit that into the kitchen room. That way it's easier to get everything straight and I can paint a clear coat on top. If I do wood, I'll glue it right to the the floor and stain it before I put the walls and floor together. Straight up contact paper can just be laid down on the surface already there. I can change my mind easy about that one later, since the contact paper peels right up.
This morning I started working on a fireplace. I found an idea on Pinterest where you can cut out brick shapes from the type of cardboard that eggs come in, paint them to look like bricks and glue them on to your fireplace frame. It looks so neat, that I just have to try it out. I don't have any Elmer's glue, so I might just use my wood glue so I don't have to wait. I hate waiting.
My daughter has already given me a list of furniture for the livingroom. She wants a brown couch (like ours), a white chair and a black chair. I have some zebra striped fur fabric, and I'm going to see if she'd be okay with that instead. Then the two chairs would match each other even if they don't match the couch. The walls of the living room are going to be pink. I think I'm going to paint red art deco flowers on the walls.
The bedroom is going to be purple and the kitchen, green. I have some neat stamps that might make some nice "wall paper" type designs on the walls. I may or may not go that direction.
The one thing that is going to be a real challenge is to add a bathroom. I think I will have to add a completely new room into the existing bedroom in order to have one. I just remember that I always turned the porch into a bathroom since the house didn't have one. It will have to be small, so I'm not sure if I'll be able to put a bath tub in (you can make one from the bottom of a plastic detergent bottle!) or make a shower stall. The toilet will be a challenge. I saw a suggestion of using a floss container for the tank and the top of a plastic bottle for the seat. I don't see the right shapes in my house though. I'll have to keep my eyes open or make something.
This morning as I worked on the fireplace, I was reminded of the time I made tiny houses out of business cards. I was so bored sitting at the register of the junk shop (there just weren't that many customers during the week) that the first house I made was from my step-father's business cards. He ran the coffee shop downstairs from where I worked. The owners of the printshop a few doors down saw it, and paid me $20 to make them one too. Their's turned out really nice. I even hung their names from the roof. It was so nice that someone actually stole it from their office.