Making a doll house- Part 1- planning and overview

Hello everyone! 

A few months back I was in a dilemma. It was close to my darling niece’s fourth birthday and I wanted to give her a gift. And over the last two years I had developed the reputation of making special gifts by hand. For her second birthday I had accumulated a lot of her photographs and made a collage of the precious moments along with some of her precious utterances. The next year I bought a simple Barbie jewellery box and personalized it with her pictures for her to keep her trinkets and clips. So it was but natural for me to want to go one step higher this time.

In a discussion with my mother I found out that she and her friend have been using a carton (which had come with a new gas stove) and imagining it to be a doll house. So that got me thinking. A couple of years back, for a project in college I had made some miniature furniture and placed it in a carton with some divisions for different rooms. I thought, if I had done it once I could do it once again. And this time for a loved one who can enjoy it for years to come.
When we first planned this, we thought we would recreate the same doll house made with used cartons. But then we thought, why not make something more durable which she could play with for years to come and which will have some use even after she has outgrown it. We looked online for existing doll houses which we could furnish, but found that these were too expensive and out of our budget. Then we decided to check with our local carpenter for options. Now keep in mind that, my mother and I live in different cities so all the planning had to be done over the phone and thanks to whatsapp.
I made an estimate plan on a piece of paper and sent it to my mother who discussed the options with the carpenter. He brought the frame the following day and we were surprised to see that it was much bigger than we originally planned. And we had to deviate from our original plan of adding a roof to it since that would make it much bigger. So then we thought why not make it a modern flat with a terrace.
Over the next few months both of us spent all our free time with this little project of ours. While I was incharge of making the furniture, my mother took care of the outer structure to make it look more homely. And this was our final outcome.

(Note: Unfortunately the pictures were taken after my niece started playing with it so some of the things might seem a bit strewn about)

So, our final doll house had four rooms, the living room, kitchen, bedroom and bathroom. The carpenter had told us that it would take a lot of time to make windows and doors so we had to improvise. My mom used her creativity here. She saw a calender lying around with some pictures drawn by children. So she made some cute curtains to go with these pictures and made it look like windows. She used gift wrapping paper for wallpaper. We tried using a few bright and fun ones keeping in mind that it was for a little girl. She used handmade chart paper for the floors and for the exterior wall we used red handmade paper and then I drew some black lines to give it the effect of bricks.

That’s how we got started. I will discuss how I made each component of the furniture in upcoming posts.
P.S. Once she outgrows playing with the doll house and she’s older she could even remove all the furniture and use this structure as a bookshelf :)