American Girl Doll House Tutorial

In a previous blog post, I posted photos of the American Girl Doll House that my husband built  for our granddaughters to play with when they come to visit. I had a lot of fun decorating it. I promised I would share photo's and do a tutorial on making the custom built doll house. I will be doing a separate blog on the kitchen custom kitchen cabinets that he built.

 Used 1/2 inch MDF purchased from Home Depot.  My husband purchased  4 x 8 foot length boards had them cut the boards in two foot width sections.  Be aware if you have them cut the boards for you that their saw may be off and may not be square. Room sizes were 24 x 24 x 24. Dining room and kitchen is 48 x 24 x 24.  Used a wooden spindle bought from Lowe's for stabilizing the above flooring.

 He used a router to made Dado's on the ends and in the center.

 Used TiteBond wood glue and used nail air gun to attach the wood.

Please ignore the flooring in our garage.  The previous owners painted the floor and when it gets when from car dripping when it rains causes the paint to chip off....sorry I really hated showing this... He used these straps after he glued and nailed while waiting for glue to dry. Used Luan backing.  We did not attach the backing until after we painted the walls and ceilings.  This allowed us to paint front and back.

Here is photo of 4 rooms painted without backing. 

 I wanted to paint the bedrooms but didn't want to spend a lot of money and buy a lot of paint that I would not be using.  So I purchased acrylic paint - Apple Barrel from Wal-mat - 2 ounce bottles and painted the dolls bedrooms with it.  Pink Parfait and Turquoise are the two colors I purchased.  I also used my Cricut and cut out the letters to spell the word DREAM and placed above one of the beds.  My husband made the bed shown in the photo below.  The dresser I purchased from Hobby Lobby.  The black table lamp I purchased at Dollar Tree.  They do sell these at Michaels and come in colors - black, white, and pink.  They do work.

Here is the bathroom.  We used 3 different styles of tile square flooring to make the floor, shower/tub wall surround.  He used caulking to fill in the gaps.  Used a command hook for shower and to hold bath robe. 

 Here is the stainless steel kitchen drawer pulley I purchased at Lowe's to use as towel bar in bathroom. 

The flooring.  I purchased these long faux strips of wood with adhesive backing for the deck and for the living room wood flooring. 

 Here my husband cut out small wood sections out of the long strips - laid it all out in a pattern before we actually adhered to living room floor.  This allowed us for accuracy and to be able to design the faux wood flooring the way we wanted to. 

Here is the finished flooring.  I still need to decorate the living room.  These are the bean bag chairs I made for now....Dennis is going to make realistic wood furniture for the living room. 

Here we used two different adhesive tiles for the kitchen and dining room. In photo below he is cutting out section to go around wooden spindle. 

 Here we have the faux tile and faux wood flooring. Used 4 squares on each side.

The decking  - we used the long strips of faux wood and ran them front to back to create realistic wood decking.  We decided not to put up a fence at this time.  We didn't want them having to reach over the fence to play with the dolls.  Maybe later when they get taller we will add them. The chairs and table Dennis made these.  He didn't have a pattern - just designed his own.  I keep telling him to draft these patterns and we could sell them.  We have sold the furniture locally. Shipping and packaging would be costly.  People do it...we haven't sold ours that way.  

Here is Isabelle in her sewing room.  I have a separate blog with a tutorial on how Dennis made the sewing machine, iron, and ironing board. 

Thanks for stopping by and browsing.  Be sure to click on "follow my blog" to keep up with  future doll crafts, clothing, accessories and American Girl doll finds.

GiGi