# DH Dolls house



## robscastle (May 13, 2012)

*The start*

My son has a young daughter Caitlin, and he asked me to build her a Dolls House.

A fairly simple project that I thought I could knock over one weekend.

Well its now into the third week and I am finding that attempting to recreate an existing house from 1:100 scale plans challenging to say the least.

I had heaps of 12mm MDF so I thought I would use that.










I made heaps of templates for the windows as every one appeared to have different dimensions.










The process I used was:
make the template, (took longer to make than the final window)
Mark out the outline
Drill jig saw holes
remove the bulk of material with a jig saw
Re-attach the template
Using a template router bit route the profile
then using the shaper round over the edges on the outside,and then on the inside route out a recess for the plastic windows.

I then made the veranda it took most of all day mostly due to glue drying.


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## robscastle (May 13, 2012)

*Making the internal stairs*

The stairs took quite a lot of time, mostly experimenting on what would look scale accurate.
I built up the first set of stairs, then the landing then the second set.

Once I had a reasonable result added the sides and internal wall and the external wall

I made the hand rail using rounding over and a small cove bit.

Cut the rails from 5mm dowel and then set about drilling and fitting everything together

Talk about being fiddly !! 









The bottom plate has a groove routed into it to sit over the top of the internal wall.









The rails I dyed black with wood stain and then sprayed everyting with gloss polyeurethane


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## robscastle (May 13, 2012)

*Painting everything*

With all the walls complete I started painting everything.

first off sanding sealer was applied








then all the internal walls were done








I must add a thank you to,
Elaine Duncan
The Paint Place Cannon Hill.

Elaine and her brother provided valuable paint advice on timber stain for the floors.
After about three trips in one day to the shop and experimenting with various finishes the floors looked great









I found that painting such small walls and areas like the WC which was only 65mm wide proved challenging as most rollers are 75mm+ minimum size.

So some experimental band sawing was required on the 75mm rollers to get them down to 55mm + the handle width had to be taken into consideration as well.


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## 489tad (Feb 26, 2010)

robscastle said:


> *Painting everything*
> 
> With all the walls complete I started painting everything.
> 
> ...


I missed the first two blogs but my comment will still apply. Be carfull you can go over board with a dollhouse 
You did a nice job with the stair case. Just wondering how you gonna get the plumbing in?


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## robscastle (May 13, 2012)

*The cost of minaturisation*

Well here we are and another week gone, (week 3) whilst working part time on the Dolls House Project.

Not a lot of progress, in fact I had to remove all the roof sections due to insufficent overhang on the eaves.

This is the before shot.









Then this is how how it looks now









You may say why bother its just a Dolls house, as I did initally. 
However I found that I knew it was incorrect and made the decision to replace it rather than spend time attempting to justify why I left it that way after seeing the "As built" pictures.









It was all well worth doing in my mind as this item may/will outlive me.

Its interesting to note that after receiving the as built pictures and reviewing the all the drafting plans, I noticed they were all marked "proposed plan".

So this raises the question did the builder have "Build To Plan"

The cost of miniaturisation and striving for perfection is also something that should be considered in these type of projects.

For example I have paid over $200 in paint and consumables to date.

The Plus $200 list
Sanding sealer $50.00
Wood filler $10.00
Nails and screws $5.00
undercoat $30.00
Finishing coats, 7 pots of 500mL tins of various colours $65.00
Sandpaper $30.00.
Paint application accessories $20.00

That does not include 
Any timber construction Material, time or Power consumed, broken/worn out router bits, (MDF seems to burn them up no problems there!

Then adding in the fact there are Dolls House kit models on the market for approx $250.00 makes one wonder how they can do it.

I also found by having to rework parts corrects the errors but detracts from the original neat finish.

Regardless the project continues, another month to Christmas! Get it done !!


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## FirehouseWoodworking (Jun 9, 2009)

robscastle said:


> *The cost of minaturisation*
> 
> Well here we are and another week gone, (week 3) whilst working part time on the Dolls House Project.
> 
> ...


Cool! Well done so far. Can't wait to see the end result.

Cheers!


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## robscastle (May 13, 2012)

*week 4 work*

Hello fellow LJs


















Another week has passed, and I have made some progress with the Dolls House worth reporting.
After the roof rebuild drama I got motivated and now have all the Flooring attached to each respective floor, and I have started fitting a series of red lifting handles.
The handles are going onto areas within each section so the pick up and movement of the individual modules can be carried out without disturbing the inside fitout.

Intersting enough the main external roof has four wirlly birds fitted to the roof. So again I have a plan to use these as lifting points, more on this subject later, work in progress.










All the gables have been installed and then it was time to make a start on the gutters.

The Gutters.

I needed to add gutters to the roof and Veranda so I checked out the local craft shops, my second visit after looking for minature corrigated iron, and I again came up with the same results, nothing really suitable.

I did however find something really interesting, a couple of bags of plastic handles, for $2.00! more on these later.

To make the gutters it was out with the shaper and fitted up with a router bit I made my gutters.

A fairly routine setup, Jig up the shaper, run a few test runs and when a satisfactory result is obtained to do a production run.

I decided to gutter up the veranda first up, just in case it didnt look the part.

It looked OK and so I did the main roof, but as it was beer o clock I packed upfor the day and didnt take any more pictures.


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## SuburbanDon (Mar 15, 2010)

robscastle said:


> *week 4 work*
> 
> Hello fellow LJs
> 
> ...


Wow that's a fair bit of work. So far so good.


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## robscastle (May 13, 2012)

*weekend work on the DH roof sections *










Well I did the rough out of the roof for the kitchen and verandah.

The cutting of perpex is one messy job!
Seems the shavings have some bizzare attraction to me any other tool I was using on it.
Talk about stick like the proverbial, what gives?

Hey I took a couple of pictures with my phone, looking in the staircase window, its like the real thing if you didnt know any better









Anyway the perspex sections I rebated, I used my shaper on them, the wood frame my trusty table saw.

Some still have the protective material on them but the perspex is translucent satin finish.

I couldnt live without my saw its a really good performer, rippin' and cross cuttin' all day.
It has never missed a beat during its life, apart from shredding a drive belt, and regular maintnance its a real workhorse.









Well thats enough for today next will be the finishing of the decking, then sanding and painting everything , not looking forward to the painting, its very fiddly,and requires meticlous patience and then there is the post cleaning up of the brushes and myself.


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## robscastle (May 13, 2012)

*Task Complete*

Well its finished,
I have a few left over process pictures left but dont want to bore you with them,

The plans and most of the jigs are still avilable so if its something that interests you drop me a line or two.

In my finished project post I eluded to some "cookies" within the pictures. Being a bit of a humourous person and always good for a prank or two, I added two "cookies" within the house pictures.
It was mainly forthe entertainment of imediate family howerer a few Astute LJs picked upon them

So here they are in an enlarged form

Caution Naked bodies follow !!!

1 Is a picture of my grandson Rocky sitting on his new toilet trainer so I stuck it on a piece of wood in the upstairs toilet.








2 Is a naked lady I found on the net in an outdoor shower, she went into the ensuite downstairs.


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