A good candidate for legs is a square or rectangular shaped dollhouse that is front opening. Keep in mind that you won't be able to add landscaping to a dollhouse on legs. The dollhouse is suppose to look like a piece of furniture.
The first thing you want to go is get the legs and the base. First, I went to the hardware store and got a piece of plywood that’s 2/8”th thick. It's basically twice the thickness of the dollhouses plywood. I had it cut at the hardware store to the same exact measurement as the first floor of the dollhouse. The base is needed because you don’t want to put the legs directly on the dollhouse floor since it is only 1/8"th thick. The legs will be at the corners of your dollhouse and there will be no support for the middle of the floor. This can pose a problem when you begin adding furniture to your dollhouse. You don’t want your first floor to sag with the weight. It needs support.
I then bought the furniture legs. Furniture legs are expensive but at the hardware store they had these nicely carved ones for a good price. When buying the legs you have to keep in mind two things:
1. Try to get the legs without the screw on the top. If your legs do come with screws, try to have them removed. Someone at the hardware store can suggest some ways for you to do that or they might even do it for you.
2 You also have to keep in mind the length of the legs. If you get legs that are too small, you will have to crouch down to view the interior of your dollhouse. You need legs that are at least 20” long. You want to be able to stand or sit in front of your dollhouse to view the interior. If you have a very long, narrow, rectangular shaped dollhouse, with many floors, like a town dollhouse, you can get away with buying shorter legs. That way your dollhouse can appear to be a high boy cabinet.
To assemble the “table” that your dollhouse will sit on, you will need someone to hold one end of the base for you or you can rest it on a table of the same height.
I positioned a leg on one corner of the base, flush at both edges. I added wood glue to the leg and then hammered the base on it using three nails. You want to get long enough nails to do this. 3” nails are good enough.
After all four legs where in place, I got two left over porch posts and I cut them to size to fit between each leg on the sides. I used masking tape to hold the legs tightly against the porch posts.
Now, you will begin building the dollhouse on this unit. As you build and add trim, this wobbly assembly will become strong.
Let your imagination guide you from this point on. You can add carved dowels between the front legs as well as the sides or you can add them closer to the base or towards the leg ends. It's up to you how you want your dollhouse to look.
