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Welcome to the little family.

Karen, just make sure you don't catch the 'spackle bug'. You'll be emptying closets and flipping beds to find those errant cracks and 10-year-old nail holes. A bucket of spackle and a putty knife in hand. If you get a bad case of 'spackle bug', like me, you'll show up on your neighbours'd porch asking if you can spackle their walls. 🙂 Here's a product many folks do not know about ... whipped spackle https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJE5UXmKTsM

Hi, I'm new to the dollhouse community. I recently bought a Duracraft Tudor TD200 from a yard sale. It's something that I once tried to build with my grandfather many years ago but never finished. I plan on getting my children involved so they can see what a rewarding process of building a dollhouse can be. And to see how much goes into building one. I'm sure they will learn valuable skills they will use in the future. I'm so excited to build and make it come to life but it sadly came with no instructions. I am sure I could wing it but would like to save myself a lot of future headaches, which I'm sure, will most definitely come along the way. Hoping there is someone who can help or steer me in the right direction. This forum I discovered here is so full of information and great ideas!! So glad I came here!! Once again, I am so happy to have found this awesome treasure!! Thank you in advance!!

Welcome to the little family, Lynn. Lots of our members have built or are building the Beacon Hill and will be able to share pointers with you.

New to building also and I was looking at the wiring kits. I think though for my first build I'm going to stick with battery lights. Looking forward to updates on how your lighting goes! Lynn

HI all, Last Xmas I started building book nooks which revived my desire to do a whole dollhouse. When I was a kid my grandfather was going to build me a dolhouse but that never happened. Now that I'm an old lady the urge to build one myself has taken over. I just purchased the Beacon Hill and it should be here at the end of the week. Got the craft room all cleared out and supplies on the way. Looking forward to getting started! Throw any tips my way as this is my first large project Thanks, Lynn

Welcome to the forum!

Hi Kate! Welcome! I’ve made all sorts of great lights from cheap 1 inch battery picks. I make them so the batteries are replaceable. Happy to answer any questions if I can

Arielle, never NEVER post your personal contact information on line where spammers can harvest it. People can contact you through our internal messaging feature. At the top of the page there's a little envelope icon; when a number appears beside it you will have a message. If you click on the three little dots at the top right of the box your post is in you should get an "edit" option in the drop down box that you can use to remove your email address from your post.

Hello my mom and I are trying to build the SF 555 and we accidentally glued some of the support corner pieces the wrong way. Does anyone have one they started and decided they didn’t want and I can get the pieces to make the B/C, C/D, F/G, G/H and K/L pieces. Please email me ac.mcmullen@yahoo.com thank you

Oh, good. I was worried I'd lost all my marbles. Again.

@Kami I saw the "woman" in the door too! You are not alone in the tricky eye department.

Considering regular Barbies are 1:6 scale, you'd be absolutely right! I was pleasantly surprised to run across the three I found in 1:12.

Yes, so my eyes are playing tricks. Not the first time. Nor the last, I'm sure. I swear I see hair, a face, shoulders and the chest. Ghost of Barbies past. Anyways, she'd be twice the size of Ken.

Kami, the first part of the sentece was next to the photo; I fixed it. It's a "stained glass" insert in that door, not Barbie; she's up in the attic/ nursery with the baby.

FurMama, I also had a humongous recliner, and yes it dwarfed everything else in the room. In the end I gave it away to my Father-in-Law, and scored lots of points! I guess I need to just roll with the flow, gather what I like and make the rest. My Grandmother was quite short, and used a small stool while cooking in the kitchen. Art imitates life. https://forum.greenleafdollhouses.com/blogs/blog/205-the-ginkgo-house-start-to-finish/

Beautiful work, HavanaHolly. For me, so far, upholstery is winning every battle. I'll look for some old ties. I think some of your text is lost behind the pics? Are my eyes playing tricks, or is a woman (Barbie) looking at Ken through the door window ??

I try not to order anything that doesn't have the measurements listed for the item. Even that is not always accurate. Like Holly said our RL environments have less than perfect scale items. I love my humongous RL recliner. It totally dwarfs my grandmother's antique sofa and overwhelms my small living room but neither one are going anywhere.

I have a sneaking suspicion that 1:12 is loosely applied because they are dollhouses. In real life there are large and small extremes, but it's worse in miniature. This is why I wound up making nearly everything that goes into my houses (including upholstered furniture; old polyester neckties work really well for this). The 1:12 armchair my 1:12 Ken is sitting in doesn't show up too well: I found that the tie I used for my 1:24 Knowle settee worked just fine: I had enough of the tie to upholster two armchairs, but the second one doesn't show up at all. I found 1:12 Barbies in a local doll shop. The lady in front of the settee is one of my polymer clay and pipe cleaner concoctions. I dress my dolls myself, and the books with patterns fit scale 1:12 dolls.

I guess I'll start with dolls. I am finding myself drawn to the German 1930s-ish dolls, but they are small, maybe around 4 1/2 to 4 3/4 inches, 5 on their tippy-toes. Today's dolls via Amazon or eBay are 6 inches, and come with a litany of 'beauty surgeries' already complete. I have built this house based on my own height and frame (at 60++ and shrinking), so going smaller or bigger might throw off the scale ?? I need a doll just to check my scale and traffic patterns and all those things that make a dollhouse space appear authentic. So far none seem to work. Is this common? I was hoping just to order something to get started, and can trade up later. All dead ends so far, however. I know I can make my own - and that option is getting closer every day - but I was hoping for a quick fix. The 30s dolls are tempting, and they have some collector value as well. Plus they are very cool, and most come already dressed. The new ones need to be clothed, and at my age that feels weird. There are lots of options out there, from jeans and a tee, to athletic wear, to evening wear and on down the line, but I just don't see myself clothes shopping for a doll, and then actually dressing her or him. Mental block, I guess. I'd rather get a Poodle with those little doggie vests. This is going to take more coffee than I budgeted for. Then there are the accessories, from small vases to chairs to microscopes, coffee makers, books, and so on. My microscope is humongous, while my antique motorcycle feels small. I have checked out the suggested links this community has provided, and certainly a lot is avail, but much of it feels very traditional. Not a bad thing, but I'm going contemporary with a few antiques and odd finds here and there (in design land we call that eclectic- Or used to. Trends change) - okay, I confess I'm filling it with picker finds like old tables found in barns, chairs with repaired legs - the stuff you really find in those open-aire antique markets, my total happly place. I am making most of the wood pieces, but upholstery just isn't working for me, so I am looking to buy the sofa, etc. But, alas, my issue with scale consistency. Will I end up with the world's smallest sofa set next to the world's largest chair? Both sold as 1:12? I have yet to sign up for Etsy, but I don't really see much difference. I do see some sellers not on A or E, but more or less the same conundrum lives on. And no, listed measurements are not always accurate either. Should I just abadon all hope of consistency and just buy what I like? I'll end up with a 4 1/2 foot woman, maybe in her mid to late 20s and dressed in burlap, carrying a 600 pound microscope to a table that comes up to her natural, God-given boobs. There is some humor in that, I guess. More coffee, please. In a large 1:1 scale cup. NOTE: According to Wikipedia ... The 1:12 scale was also used in Jonathan Swift's 1726 novel Gulliver's Travels. The ratio was used to compare the Lilliputians to Gulliver. Okay, so it is at least that old.

Welcome to the little family, Kate. The Building Team built and blogged the Glencroft back in 2005. I don't wire any of my houses, either; when I was a little girl most dollhouses weren't wired for lights, although my Keystone had a strategically placed appliance-type light bulb centrally located over the stairwell on the second floor that I could plug in if I wanted light when I played with it, which wasn't all that often because of where the wall outlet was in my room.

Welcome Kate! Ask away there are many here who have built that house (not me though) as well as a builder's blog on this site. I hear you on the wiring, none of my houses are wired.

Thank you!!

Hello, I'm Kate, and I have had the Greenleaf Glencroft Tudor dollhouse under my bed for over 15 years. I was overwhelmed with the electrical components that I didn't even start. Now, there are LED battery lights, etc, I feel inspired to give it ago. I have lots of questions. Thanks for listening.

I can attest that Kidney Stones is worse than childbirth - I'd actually rather give birth to triplets with no meds than EVER have kidney stones again ....I've had 5 bouts of them - gave up drinking Fresca and increased my water intake and thankfully have not had them again since about 2015... I pray it doesn't change!