Millie's Doll House

My grandpa worked on this house for years and when he decided to make Arizona his permanent place, decided to hand down the house to me. It has sat in our garage for a few years waiting to be finished. Millie has the best imagination ever and loves to play dolls and barbies and princesses, so I thought her third birthday would be a great time to finish this bad boy. 

The main parts I needed to finish by her birthday were:

• Completing the stairs and railing
• Adding a wall on the second floor
• Framing around the doors
• The flooring on the second and third level
• The roof of the tower
• Paint  

Here is the condition it was in.

The railing,stairs, and wall were actually easy to complete and install. However, if you ever decide to build a doll house, I would recommend you not installing the stairs until after you have painted or wallpapered and installed the flooring. It was a wee bit hard getting that paper in behind the stairs.

The main floor already had teeny tiny hard would put in. Good job grandpa! I however copped out and went for a laminate. I bought five pieces of hardwood laminate tiles at Home Depot for 99 cents a piece. Chris and my dad made templates with paper, taped the tiles together with painters tape, traced the template onto the tiles, scored the tiles, and placed them in. It wasn't as easy as I made it sound. It took them about three hours of combined time to complete. 

While they were busy doing that, I was busy over at the scroll saw all week cutting pieces of shingles at different angles to apply to the tower roof. About half way through the saw blade broke. My dad was out of town for a couple days and I needed help to fix it. I moved on to painting. 

I initially wanted to go bold with the color. But after looking at the house I just didn't think turquoise or coral was going to look right. So I went for green, my go to color. And after purchasing it, I decided it was just about the same color of green on Millie's wall in her old room. Awwwe. It made me feel all sentimental about the old house and really, really happy that I chose it. Like her room was living on. Ha, I'm a weirdo, I know.

The painting was tedious. After the kids were in bed, I headed out to the garage for a paint party that lasted about four days total. Around those windows was difficult. Yikies, I get the chills even thinking about painting those. And they aren't perfect, but I gotta let it go. 

The last part I did was the wallpaper. The plain white walls were not doing anything for me. So I headed to Michael's for some scrapbook paper. And as always I walk away realizing that I have complete grandma style. Clothes, fabric, apparently scrapbook paper, I am all grandma. I like to describe my style as modern grandma. I think it goes with the house great. The paper in the upstairs is a little more modern and downstairs is more old lady. 

I put the paper on the wall I was covering, scored it with my fingernail or scraper, took it out and cut it with scissors, and adjusted where I needed too. The upstairs was a little difficult lining up with all those diamonds and lines, but I got it close enough. At least that's what I need to keep telling myself. Once the paper was ready, I modge podged the top and place it in. I worked my way down scraping all the bubbles out as best I could.

Here are my results:

For Mills birthday I assigned anyone who wanted to, a room in her house. I went with Playmobil. And this stuff is so much fun! There is a whole bag of little things like tooth brushes, cans of fish, teeny toys, that will be tucked away until she is older. For now she can use the bigger stuff and a few small things. Thanks for everyone who helped and bought things for this house. I am going to add drapes and maybe more paper along the walls eventually, but for now it is all hers to play away with!