I am starting to work on the interior finishes of the dollhouse. Once I finish the interior, I will attach the panels. I want to wait to attach them because I don’t want them swinging while I work inside.
I aim to make the dollhouse resemble my real house, but this is challenging due to the different layout. I need to decide the purpose of each room. The dollhouse lacks a foyer and a garage, and its design is more enclosed compared to my open-concept townhouse, so I must ensure the separate rooms make sense. I plan to turn the large bottom room into a living room and the adjacent room into a den. The large room on the second floor will be the kitchen, with the next room serving as a dining room. The small third-floor room will be a bathroom, and the one next to it will be a bedroom. Although my townhouse doesn’t have a den, I wanted to avoid creating a guest bedroom, and having a home office is common in modern houses.
While I’m not thrilled about having a staircase in the kitchen, I really wanted one of the large rooms to be the kitchen. In miniature, having the bathroom on the third floor isn’t too bad, even if it would be inconvenient in real life. As I've been assembling this dollhouse, my actual house has undergone some flooring changes. I plan to use similar flooring in this miniature version. I will use wood-look flooring in the same rooms as my real house, tile in the kitchen and bathroom, and carpet on the staircase steps.
I will try using wood-look shelf paper for the staircase risers so they match my real house stairs. It has a similar hue to the wood-look flooring, although it’s not identical. I think this difference won’t be noticeable at such a small scale. The wood-look flooring is too thick for the staircase, making shelf paper a good alternative for this hard-to-reach area.
I couldn’t find carpet in my preferred color, but what I found will work. The tile is lighter than I expected, which helps balance everything out.
I applied stucco to all interior walls and ceilings. To achieve an orange peel texture typical of modern homes, I dabbed it with a sponge brush. Since I'm unsure how to create knockdown ceilings at this scale, I used a regular paintbrush for texture instead. Unfortunately, these details are too small to be captured in camera pictures. I used dollhouse stucco mixed only with water until it reached a cake icing consistency. When mixed with paint, stucco tends to crack as it dries and requires touch-ups; mixing it with water avoids this issue, allowing me to paint over it once dry. For the walls and ceilings, I chose white paint because that’s how my house is currently painted. I haven’t had time to repaint over the “builder's white” yet but plan to do so in the future; for now, my dollhouse will match.
I painted all window trims inside and out. My real house has matching colors for both interior and exterior window frames, so I applied the same colors to the dollhouse windows.
