Glueing of the walls commences, and here I was happily using a college textbook as weight to keep everything level.

I've just discovered your album, and I'm in awe. What a wonderful project!

Can I ask about your bash - did you design the new walls with tabs and slots, are they held together by trim, or how did you do it? I've got a Glencroft lying around that I'm thinking about bashing, but I'm a bit worried that I might end up with a situation where it's not stable...

 

On 11/23/2016, 4:51:26, ariadne said:

I've just discovered your album, and I'm in awe. What a wonderful project!

Can I ask about your bash - did you design the new walls with tabs and slots, are they held together by trim, or how did you do it? I've got a Glencroft lying around that I'm thinking about bashing, but I'm a bit worried that I might end up with a situation where it's not stable...

 

Hi ariadne,

Thanks! I'm really enjoying the process. I’m sure there are other ways to make extra floors, but the way I did it seems to be pretty stable, especially as I am constantly moving the dollhouse around to work on it! As far as my bash, here are my steps. Please let me know if anything is unclear or if you need photos or a video of an example mock-up with cardboard of any of these steps. I’m happy to help!

1.      Disclaimer: These guidelines are written based on my experience with a NIB DuraCraft Newberg dollhouse that contained all pieces and is a plywood tab and slot dollhouse with pieces that are all 1/8-inch thick. I have not yet been able to build an MDF dollhouse, but I imagine that the same guidelines below would be able to be used with minor modification to achieve the same result. The guidelines from here on out assume a plywood tab and slot dollhouse is being built.

2.      First off, don’t throw away your scraps, and make sure to keep it all in one piece if possible! Those pieces left over from when you punch out your dollhouse may be needed later, depending on how you decide you want to bash your house! Also, whenever I glued something I used wood glue, because I want this house to last. Using wood glue makes the house pretty sturdy, and then I also braced the walls by using 1/8 thick basswood strips laid flat against the plywood as the siding. After I prime and paint the house, the tiny lines between the strips might be lost, but if so I plan on fixing that with a ruler and an ultra-fine tipped pen. I didn’t want to use more decorative siding and lose the structural strength that doubling the wall thickness gives me.  Also, I bought extra wood joints from Manchester Woodworks on eBay, because normally kits don’t come with enough extra to make modifications. The pieces were pretty cheap and well worth it.

3.      Do a dry fit of the original kit, and determine which floors are suitable for duplicating. For my Newberg, that happened to be the first floor because the second floor of the original kit had oddly shaped areas and shorter walls in some places due to the roof placement. You can modify your floors when it comes to inner walls, windows, and additional porches later on, as I will explain. Masking tape will be your friend, and you should tape wherever you need to so that nothing moves for step 4.

4.      During your dry fit, figure out on the original parts where the ceiling of the first floor/floor of the second floor are in relation to the side walls. You’ll want a nice sharp pencil for this so that you can get into all of the crannies. If your lines wobble a little like mine did due to un-sanded bumps in the wood, don’t worry. Just use a ruler after and correct for those using the straight parts of the line. If you are building a tab and slot dollhouse, generally this line will be either right on the top edge of the slot of the dollhouse wall, or a little below. Either is fine, the process is the same either way. You will want to make sure that your lines are the same height across all of the original pieces, so that your floor will be at least mostly level. (Dollhouses are never perfectly square anyway. ;) ) 

5.      Next, take some plywood in the same thickness of your dollhouse walls and trace each part up to the line you created. I did this by simply laying the dollhouse part on top of the new plywood, because I found that creating a separate paper template was finicky and led to inaccuracies. After doing this you should have a template now that is nearly a perfect match to the shape of each first floor wall. If you want to change the shape of windows, placement of doors, etc., now is your chance. If you look at my album you can see how on the new first floor of my Newberg I kept the door in the same place but changed the windows, and on the new second floor I made three identical windows across the space. So bash away! Whatever you want to do for windows and doors, do it. I had to make access cuts for some of my windows, but with a little wood glue and trim it’s just as structurally sound as before I made the cuts.

6.      Making a duplicate floor is a little trickier, because I did want it to be highly stable. For the Newberg I also duplicated two different versions of the original floors so that I had a ground floor porch and a third floor porch, but no second, fourth, or attic porches. For the new first floor, I just used the kit base, as that was easiest and I wanted a porch there anyway.

a.       Tip time! During my build I accidentally cut the wood joints level with the new walls before I realized that I should keep them the height they were! So don’t make my mistake, because the structural strength will be increased even more if the joints have fewer points at which they are glued end to end. My house is still very very strong, but could have been better and if I had it to do over again I would have kept those joints intact.

b.      Tip the second! If you plan out your entire kit bash before you start and know the lengths of the joints you will need, you could theoretically get in contact with Manchester Woodworks’s proprietor or someone else who makes replacement dollhouse parts, and custom order the joints you need in the new length. Or mill them yourself, if you feel up to it. ;) Again, if I had thought of this before I had done all of my work I would have done this so that the strength of the house was increased. It also would have made putting the whole thing together much easier. *facepalm*

7.      For the second floor I didn’t want a porch, so instead I traced the original kit’s second floor parts onto 1/8-inch plywood. Then, because I wanted that extra stability, I added 1/8 of an inch onto the three sides of the house that had walls, removing the tab on each side. This allowed me to sandwich the floor between the walls, and between that and wood glue it made it really sturdy, and make sure that the walls remained as straight as possible. When doing this I neglected to leave room for the joints because I was silly and trimmed them short, however if I had it to do over again I would have made sure to leave room for them for that added structural strength.

8.      When I was figuring out how to do the third floor I realized that I had already glued together the original first floor that had a porch, so I was trying to figure out how to recreate that when I realized that I still had the scraps from the punch out! Because I hadn’t broken these or trashed them I was able to find the scrap piece that had contained the parts for the first floor, and I traced the inside to get the template. For the Newberg dollhouse the porch/bay window area is a separate piece of wood from the rest of the floor, and it is braced on the underside with a strip of plywood. The strip for the ground floor is roughly double the length of the strips used for the other floors, so I knew that if I cut that out it would interfere with placing the walls for the floor below. So instead I just relied on the smaller strip length placed by the bay window to provide support on that side, and glued the other end in place as best I could. Later, I will add some decorative but also functional support beams on the underside of the third floor porch that will add both structural strength to that side but also make it look more realistic as well.

9.      Since the third floor was now glued in place, I was able to simply build the rest of the kit normally according to the directions, but glue it to the bashed floors below. To make the areas where the joints meet stronger I laid a thick coating of wood glue across the gaps and filled everything in. I will also be adding long strips of trim to all of the corners so that I can make it look smoother and also have it be more sturdy along the areas where the different bashed floors meet. Since everything is well glued I have found that my house is strong to be moved by simply grabbing (carefully) the top half – nothing moves or shifts.

I hope that answers a lot of your questions, and again please feel free to ask me anything else!