I am in the midst of making over my 8 year old’s bedroom.  I’ll show you the makeover once I’m finished, but for now I want to show you a MASSIVE project that went along with the re-design.

This is Ana White’s AG DIY Dollhouse:  (click image for link)

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A small image like that really doesn’t do it justice as you’ll see later in this post.

This bad boy is HUGE, but Chloe wanted a dollhouse for her American Girl doll and furniture, and I wanted all of her stuff off of the floor, so it became part of the room plan.

BUT

I don’t have the square footage that Ana has, so I had to adjust the plans to fit our room;

DIY American Girl Dollhouse

79″ – that’s almost 6 foot 6″ or just over 2 metres!

The reason for my oddly spaced floors is this wardrobe that Chloe’s Papa built for her for Christmas:

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Click image for link to plans.

This wardrobe is 28″ tall and “had to” go in the doll’s bedroom.

I adjusted Ana’s plans according to the 3 feet of wall space we had, and to accommodate the wardrobe and started building.

Per Ana’s DIY dollhouse plans, I used 3/4″ MDF (Medium Density Fibreboard), but if you have extra budget, you could use a nice plywood and your house would be a fair bit lighter.

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I chose to use castors on our house for manoeuvrability, but it does add an extra couple of inches to the plan height.  If you go with castors, make sure to purchase ones that can hold over 150lbs.

You’ll notice in the photo below that I tried to attach the walls with the bottom floor between them – DON’T DO THAT – shortly after the bottom fell out and I had to cut a second bottom and place the sides on top of it.  Just trying to save you a painful mistake.
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My gorgeous little DIY Diva Jr. got into the action and helped by sanding her sister’s house.

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I went with the KILZ primer again – oil based and smelly, but it really does make painting over it a breeze.

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I lucked out and found some great mis-tints at Home Depot and came home with a few jars for a dollar each.  I used a greige for the loft, Chloe chose a pale pink for the bedroom and then decided the main floor needed to be bold and we combined a few colours to get this loud teal.

DIY American Girl Dollhouse

At this point, supplies for the build had me at $86 Cdn – that’s for the MDF, primer, mis-tint paint and castors – a far cry from the $350 to $700 versions I’ve seen online.

What to do for flooring though? – this could break the bank.

Ex Friends suggested I put in hardwood floors – and I tossed around the idea of using paint stir sticks, staining them and then adhering them to the floors.  While that was on my mind, I thought I’d price out what actual (laminate) flooring would cost – I mean, I only needed 18 square feet…

Then Chloe saw these:

DIY American Girl Dollhouse

and the heavens opened and my wallet breathed a sigh of relief!  These are 12″ peel and stick tiles and they range in price from $0.60 to $1.34 each.  No work, very little investment and the best part – Chloe thinks it was entirely her idea!  Whew!

She was disappointed that I didn’t include room dividers in my build, but when you see the size of the furniture, you’ll understand why:

The loft became the family room (for now).

DIY American Girl Dollhouse

The main floor (which was sized to fit the wardrobe) is Kit’s bedroom:

DIY American Girl Dollhouse

and the lowest floor is the salon.  Chloe selected out flooring to delineate the room into a kitchen and family room – open concept – but until I’ve built her some counters, she was willing to use it as an in-house spa;

DIY American Girl Dollhouse

I know, the loft bed I built in this post isn’t shown.  It would have fit in the bedroom, but then the doll couldn’t sit up in bed – and that was an issue.

DIY American Girl Dollhouse

This doll has it pretty good eh?

I wish I had a loft family room with big screen TV.

DIY American Girl Dollhouse

The windows still need to be trimmed out and it could use one or two tweaks – but overall, I’m pretty pleased – and Chloe is through the roof.

DIY American Girl Dollhouse

The additional peel-and-stick tiles came in at about $15 Cdn, so the grand total investment was $101 Cdn.  I started building our DIY dollhouse on Friday and she was playing with it in her room on Sunday.

Not bad for a weekend project?

This WILL come up on Mother’s Day – I have to have banked some “Super-Mom” points on this one!

Have a great one!

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