How to Transform an old Dollhouse to resemble a First Period Colonial Style House

I found this dollhouse on Marketplace for $20, and I just love the simple design! It reminds me so much of a 1700’s colonial, that I am going to decorate it for that era, as well as I can.

When I found this dollhouse on Markeplace for $20, I just had to have it! It reminds me of a 1700’s colonial (first period home), with its simple design and nice wood siding.

Wouldn’t this be awesome with a walk-in fireplace?

The inside needs some definite updating.

The first thing I did when I brought this huge, heavy dollhouse home was to scrape off the old shingles. They appear to have been made out of sandpaper, which seemed to have worked well enough, but they were in such poor, water-damaged shape that I felt I needed to wash my hands thoroughly after handling it.

This handy tool holds a razor blade that I can use for scraping paint and whatever.

Next, I used a handy-dandy paint scraper, and went to work scraping off some of the peeling paint from the floors, walls, and ceiling.

While scraping the paint off. I focused more on removing any peeling paint, as I plan to put a thin coat of plaster on the walls, with some thin wood supports in walls and ceiling, to give it a more primitive effect.

So far, I plan to apply a thin coat of plaster to give the walls a more uneven white texture, with thin pieces of wood applied to walls and ceilings to suggest supports that I can hang things like dried herbs and baskets from. Because of this, I was only interested in removing flaking paint (which there was a lot of).

Using methods similar to those used in the farmhouse, I applied jumbo craft sticks to mimic real wood floors. I cut the rounded tips off the sticks with poultry shears and then applied them with glue, weighting them down in places that wouldn’t quite stay put. I used an xacto knife to trim around doorways and walls.

Next, I decided to work on the upstairs floors. I want to go with a pine board effect, similar to my farmhouse, but I would like the floors to look more weathered and stained. I plan to score the wood lightly with an xacto knife, to add wood grain, and then lightly stain them before varnishing.

Update:

This is the updated roof! After removing the paper shingles that were in poor shape, I made slate-like shingles (described in another post) out of vinyl floor tiles.

Next, I painted the walls white, using a thick paint so it looked like a thin coat of plaster. I took wood from an old flowerbed border fence, so it would have some nice weathering to it, and used that to make some wooden support beams for the lower floor. I carefully opened up the area under the stairs, so I can use it as a storage closet (I will eventually make a door for it).

A current photo of the lower floor. I have been experimenting with different flooring in the main room, and at the moment have settled on a combination of small ceramic tiles and leftover pieces of linoleum. I have tiny candle bundles hanging from the wooden beams, as well as baskets and a lantern. The fireplace is a ceramic walk-in style that I found on ebay.