Kids love acting things out. It could be their imaginary lives as princesses or simply how an ideal family in an ideal home might live. Enter the dollhouse, a place where their fantasies can truly take off… all in miniature. These toys can be pricy, however, so to avoid buying the grand model your children demand, make one from a kit — or, even better, build your own.
Dollhouses help preschoolers and older kids to play, create stories and even develop skills they may need later in life. They can be very elaborate and expensive items — custom-made 16th-century “baby houses” could cost as much as a regular-sized home — but involvement in this hobby can start simply enough. Kits are available so you and your kids can put one together quite easily. But it could be even more fun to build one yourselves, learning new skills and bonding as a family in the process — you might eventually create a dollhouse worth something on the collectors’ market!
There are as many types of dollhouses as there are stories
Dollhouse design takes in both new fashions and time-honored motifs. There are models that tie in with recent TV series like Ninjago, for example, but also plenty that let kids run old-fashioned general stores, lighthouses or horse stables, plus the are historical homes for the wannabee Southern belles among us!
Sizes, for both ready-made and kit-build models, vary a lot. The 1:12 and 1:18 scales are common, resulting in building heights ranging from a few inches to a couple of feet. Of course, any furniture and figurines in the rooms should ideally be to the same scale — a 1:6 ratio dollhouse might be needed to accommodate Barbie and her friends.
While US models often open at the back, leaving the front façade unchangeable — the house can be put on a turntable so tea parties can be quickly switched to piano recitals! — models from across the Atlantic may well be hinged at the front.
Making a dollhouse from a kit can be budget-friendly and stress-free
A dollhouse bought in kit form will never be unique, but the convenience can make this a great option. Kits cost from as little as $20 for a simple shack to several thousands of dollars for a miniature 18th-century mansion, with a huge range of house types and designs in between — try second-hand options if your kids’ dream home is not currently in stock.
Although assembling a kit is easy enough for adults, the number of pieces involved varies a lot, so look for the level of complication you reckon will best suit you and your family. Another advantage with kits is that they come as flat-packed sets of parts, so can be easily ordered and delivered by post.
If your kids have rather large dolls, encourage them to pick out some more characters from a dollhouse supplier’s catalog. They will probably want to order furniture for each room as well — sets of chairs, tables and cupboards, plus clocks, mirrors and so on, can be obtained for just a few dollars.
Building your own dollhouse: a spectrum of learning experiences!
Even if you’re not ‘crafty,’ building a dollhouse can be a lot of fun! What you construct will depend a lot on the ages and demands of your children, plus how much time (and patience) you have.
To plan your project efficiently, consider making a workbook, including a project tracker, budgeting forms, pages for jotting down ideas, and so on. Now is the time to evaluate your ambitions, so make a plan that is feasible, with some flexibility built in. We turned to Ara, expert at Bentley House Minis, to help us determine the steps needed to create your perfect dollhouse:
Arrive at your ideal dollhouse’s design
- A young child needing just a basic house with doors and windows for their favorite doll makes it easier for you
- Older kids may already have an all-consuming passion which would extend to a dollhouse!
- If your kids don’t have ideas, illustrated children’s books are often a great source of interesting home designs
- Be sure to weigh up the complications with every door, window, roof and so on that any design might include
- Consider how the rooms will be accessed — serious fans often like to have as many hinged openings as possible
Ara makes models of houses from films — Beetlejuice and The Addams Family, for example — but you should probably be less ambitious!
Calculate your dollhouse’s measurements
How big you build may depend less than you think upon available time and resources — small is beautiful (and more time-consuming and expensive) in dollhouse world. Measurements will be constrained by several factors:
- Building to the commonly used 1:12 scale makes dollhouse rooms a convenient 6”-7” high
- There is plenty of ready-made 1:12 scale furniture on sale to put in the rooms
- Building up? Multiple-floor dollhouses can be impressive and inspiring, but be realistic!
- Ara uses lots of squared paper to determine measurements easily without reaching for the ruler each time
As kids want to view the rooms and move things around in them easily, the depth of your dollhouse will probably not be great.
Decide upon the materials you will use
While plastic and tin have been used to craft dollhouses, wood is the most commonly used material:
- Quality birch plywood, which is naturally straight and rigid, is often recommended
- Try balsa wood if working with the hard stuff looks too daunting first time round
- Tiny screws and hinges will also be on your shopping list
- To fix wood, however, Ara is often seen toting her glue gun, and other types of glue serve many different purposes
- Craft stores sell all manner of specialist materials like plastics for windows, brick-effect walls, and so on
Just remember to be careful with the glue when the kids are involved!
Don’t skimp on getting the proper tools
You have now joined the honorable profession of cabinetmakers, and you need their high-precision tools:
- A quality set of screwdrivers, saws, chisels and files, etc.
- A vise and clamps to hold items under construction
- Rulers and a ‘combination square’ to get the angles right
- A two-handed “draw knife” is invaluable for cutting wood precisely
- Tin snips and maybe even a soldering iron for metal items
- Ara’s electric drill is a smaller-than-usual version, handy for model-makers
Now you have started ‘going electric’ with your tools, you can dream about table-top power saws and lathes!
Try constructing the household items too
Specialist stores for dollhouse builders and miniaturists provide all manner of furniture and ornaments, but now you are feeling creative, consider making these tiny replicas yourself. The following can be easily made from basic materials:
- Baskets: string
- Pots and pans: paper
- Door handles: wire
- Light bulbs: plastic tubes
- Pot plants: plastic sheet
- Cupboards, kitchen appliances, etc: all of the above and more!
You will also need tweezers… and of course plenty of patience.
Creating a DIY dollhouse can benefit the whole family
For yourself, carpentry a useful skill to develop, and both the techniques and the equipment can be acquired step by step. It is also a rather relaxing activity after a day at a stressful job.
For your wider family, DIY dollhouse-building could be a great ‘bonding’ activity for parents and children to do together. Try getting your daughter or son sold on the idea of creating something amazing — or, or course, just to watch you make it if they are too young to hold a screwdriver themselves!
Even if you haven’t created something beautifully neat and symmetrical, you will have had some fun together — maybe now is the time you will see what sort of sense of humor your kids have!
Five famous dollhouses that might inspire a father-and-son-or-daughter team!
Silent movie star Colleen Moore may have faded as soon as the talkies came to town, but her dollhouses lived on. Her first was built from a cigar box, but the pride of the collection was the 7′-tall, twelve-room Fairy Castle, which took her father 7 years to build, with the help of a set designer, and which has been valued at $7 million. Maybe start your family off with the cigar box edition — try using one of those lightweight wooden crates that high-quality wine or whiskey sometimes comes in.
We all enjoyed pretending being royalty when we were kids! King George V’s wife Mary was the real thing, however, and had perhaps the most royal dollhouse of them all, standing 5’ high and with 16 rooms. It was architect-designed in 1924 and features miniature versions of the finest products of the age, plus functional lighting and plumbing and even tiny books specially written by leading authors. Try making your family’s dollhouse a ‘time capsule’ with representative items, so it will be a marvel to look at in decades to come.
Carrie Stettheimer’s 12-room dollhouse was only 28 inches high, but it took her two decades to build. Perhaps inspired by Queen Mary’s dollhouse with its books written by the creator of Sherlock Holmes, she engaged leading artists to provide miniature pictures — they included the founder of conceptual art, Marcel Duchamp. After 1935, her sister completed the remaining rooms before donating it to a New York museum. Any family members who find they are not good with wood could try painting the miniature pictures!
The Astolat Dollhouse Castle, built between 1974 and 1987, proves the ambition of dollhouse enthusiasts never went away — neither did the romance, as it was inspired by a poem by Alfred Tennyson. It was valued at $8.5 million in 2015, making it probably the world’s most valuable dollhouse. Standing 9’ tall and with 29 rooms, its 10,000 extravagant miniature pieces include antiques, gold, silver and stained-glass items, and even working fireplaces. Do your kids have a favorite poem or story? Recreating Hogwarts could be a challenge, though!
in 1572, the young Princesses of Saxony were given the first ever Puppenküche — it then went on to become a very popular possession in the 19th century. Known as a ‘Nuremberg kitchen,’ this single-room dollhouse could represent a simpler assignment for your family, though you would also have to sculpt an awful lot of tiny cupboards and pots and pans to make it look authentic. It is said they have inspired generations of girls to take an interest in cookery and housework… so why not try this out on yours …. or your boys.
Let self storage take care of your dollhouse for future generations
With a bit of luck, you might just have created a family heirloom that is worth keeping! However, while some kids carry on playing with dolls until their teens, others lose interest at ages five or six, so you might find yourself with a large wooden box that merely gathers dust and takes up space somewhere in your home.
The best place for your creation could be a climate-controlled self storage unit, perhaps with climate control, where it will be protected against dirt and extreme climate conditions. You may already rent one for seasonal clothing, sports gear, toys and items that clutter up your home, especially if you’ve just made a kids play area. Keeping your dollhouse there means it will stay in good shape for when a new family member arrives. Monthly rates for climate-controlled storage units are reasonable in many large US cities:
[one_third]New York City: $198[/one_third]Los Angeles: $239[one_third_last]Chicago: $134[/one_third_last]
[one_third]Houston: $120[/one_third]Phoenix: $124[one_third_last]Philadelphia: $144[/one_third_last]
[one_third]San Antonio: $131[/one_third]San Diego: $181[one_third_last]Dallas: $133[/one_third_last]
Colleen Moore continued adding artifacts to her Fairy Castle until her death in 1988 and, like the dollhouses of Queen Mary and Carrie Stettheimer, it is still on display and seen by over a million people each year. It is said that true enthusiasts may find their apartments starting to look rather like dollhouses!
Even if your modeling never gets professional, you will have learned new skills and maybe had a great family experience. Or, just maybe, you will have created a work of art that will be a joy to play with, not just for your kids but for future generations as well.
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