Roofing

Dollhouses with roofing shingles can readily require several hundred to over 1,000 shingles. If the total processing time per shingle (prep, finish, apply, trim to fit, touch up, etc) were to average one minute and you had 1,000 to do, you would need over 16 hours to complete this part of your project. I guess if you are only ever going to build one dollhouse, and that project takes you a couple hundred hours overall, you might not mind spending the equivalent of two eight hour days doing nothing but roof shingles. Given that my second dollhouse project started about 1 month after my first house was done, and I’ve had at least two (sometimes more) in the works ever since, getting the whole roofing shingle process done faster without giving up any quality, was important to me.

If you are taking the time to read this post and have one (or more) roofing jobs in your future, I do hope that you will find sufficient value in this post to make it worth the time to read. Given that a picture has been said to be worth a thousand words, I am making a note to take some photos the next time I shingle a roof so I can revise (and greatly shorten) this post.

Materials:
When it comes to dollhouse roofing materials, there are several options to consider. I think the most popular, across all wooden dollhouses (and Victorian style dollhouses in particular), would be wooden shingles. Other options, to name a few, include material that looks like asphalt roofing shingles, materials to make thatched roofs, and simply painting the roof. If you look for it, you can even find copper foil to be used either as flashing / trim or even an entire roof. Searching the web with the right groups of keywords will yield numerous pages on this subject and something I would recommend you do as this blog post is surely not all inclusive. Many wooden dollhouse kits either come with wooden roofing shingles or expect that the builder will purchase them separately. Other kits, typically smaller and less expensive kits where shingles are not provided, may be shown in the manufacturer’s picture of the built house with plain painted roof surfaces. I have one such kit build in process right now and decided that wooden roofing shingles are a must to achieve the desired end result. All houses I’ve built to date have had wooden roofing shingles. Earth and Tree Miniatures, noted in my supplier list, has an Irish Cottage kit that is ideal for trying your hand at thatched roofs. I would like to build one (who knows maybe a few) of these someday.

Stain, Paint, Other Finishes:
The two most popular options here are stain, followed by paint. Some people leave their roofing shingles plain. Again the web can provide additional details and pictures of what other people have tried along with their builder tips from what they learned in the process. I’ve seen one case where shoe polish was used and another where the shingle treatment was intended to give the shingles a ‘weathered’ look. As an alternative to stains, you should also note that there are dollhouse roofing shingle dye kits available. I’m going to stick with what I have personal hand on experience with which is paints and stains. My personal preference (for most houses) is stained roofing shingles. That said, there are two houses I’ve built with painted roof shingles that are worth mentioning. One had black shingles which after some ‘tweaks’ looked much like a black asphalt shingle roof and the other house was made to look like it had a slate roof.

Need to Sand Shingles?
For stains (and I would think dyes as well) little or no sanding should be required. If a shingle has a sliver of wood hanging off one of the vertical sides, (from the manufacturing process) it should be removed but this should pretty much be a ‘wipe’ operation not a sanding step. If a shingle is too rough on one facing side, it can be used rough side down instead of sanding and if some small number of shingles are too rough on both sides they can be set aside / not used unless your find you need them. Note that dollhouse shingles often come in packages that have quantities of at least 100 shingles. Quantities of 250, 500, or 1,000 are pretty common. If you are going to paint the shingles, the answer to the sanding questions is a ‘maybe’. The shingles are going to have differing degrees of ‘roughness’. If you are going for the asphalt shingle look, this roughness can work in your favor. Additionally, you are going to need to avoid getting much of a ‘shine’ gloss and semi-gloss paints can have when applied to smooth surfaces. If asphalt type roofing shingles is the look you are going for, you may need some light sanding in two cases. The first is when the shingle is just too rough (on both sides and must be used due to lack of having enough extra shingles), and the second is where the shingle is too smooth. While sanding is generally preferred before painting, the fastest way to deal with this is to pre-sand only in the case of shingles being too rough on both sides but still must be used. Like with stains, any slivers of wood along the side of the shingle should be removed. The bottom edge of the shingle if particularly rough can get a quick drag across a flat piece of sandpaper to smooth it just a tad. Sanding because a shingle is too smooth can and should be deferred until the need is made clear (the roof is painted and shingled and you want to dull some shiny areas. This is best done with sand paper (about 100 – 120 grit) with just a couple of forceful downward strokes to put some roughness (scratches) into the exposed shingle surface. Expect to re-paint these areas.

When to Paint / Stain:
It is better, both in terms of time and in terms of quality, to stain / paint before the shingles are applied to the roof. This is because it can take too long to get proper coverage in cracks where shingles meet or overlap. Even with this pre-finish step, you should expect to have to do some touchup after the roof is shingled. Given that the surface the shingles will be applied to is generally not the same color as your shingles, you will want to paint or stain it to the same color as (or perhaps a bit darker than) your shingles. Even with the best of fits in shingle spacing, a lighter under surface will show through in some places and it and can be difficult and/or time consuming to get paint or stain down into these areas after the shingles are glued onto the roof. Finally, you will need to allow enough time for the paint or stain to completely dry before you start gluing the shingles onto the roof. While the dry time for paint might be as little as an hour or so, stains can sometimes take a couple of days (so you need to plan ahead). If you do find yourself pressed for drying time, you could try to force dry stained or painted shingles in an electric oven but this should be done at a fairly low temp (like around 120 – 130 F), use the convection feature if you have it as the air flow helps a lot, and be sure to ‘burn off’ any lingering fumes before cooking anything you plan on eating. WARNING: Oven baking to force dry stained shingles could be problematic. Flammable paints and stains are, well, flammable and force drying in an oven is likely to increase the level of flammable vapors. Using this force dry method in a gas fired oven is probably NOT a good idea. Even with a force dry method such as baking in an electric oven, stain dry times will still be some number of hours (better than days but still not real fast).

One way to get a quality stain job of hundreds of shingles and get it done quickly (with quickly being somewhat of a relative term) is as follows:
You will need:

1. Plenty of space to work and lay out 100’s of shingles at a time
2. A surface you can place wet stained shingles on and not have them stick too much (I use either cookie trays lined with aluminum foil (shiny side up) or good sized pieces of scrap laminate shelving or counter top.)
3. Two containers large enough to hold about 20 – 25 shingles completely submerged in stain
4. A funnel with a fairly wide top and a bottom that is too small for shingles to fall through
5. A paint brush (about ½ to 1X the width of the shingle)
6. Paper towels or rags that can be used as a blotter to absorb excess stain from coated shingles
7. I also suggest a latex (or rubber if allergic to latex) glove for at least one hand.
   

Procedure:

1. Pour some stain into one of the containers
2. Add about 20 or so shingles and stir (so that shingles get separated enough for a complete coat of stain
3. Let it sit long enough to absorb enough of the stain to get the color you want
4. Place the funnel in the other container and pour the container (with stain and shingles) into the funnel. The stain will drop through the funnel into the other container while the shingles will be left in the bottom of the funnel
5. Take the shingles out of the funnel one at a time (with your gloved hand) and brush excess stain off them into the funnel as you are taking them out
6. Blot them if required but if you keep your brush from holding too much stain, this won’t be needed.
7. Place the shingle down on whatever you are using as a place for them to dry
8. Repeat for each shingle in the funnel then move the funnel to the other container and place more shingles in the container that now has the stain

Once your get the hang of it, you can crank these out by the hundreds ‘relatively’ fast.

If you are using paint instead of stain, you can skip the pouring from container to container and the funnel. Pick up each shingle along what will become will the very top edge. Except for the very top row, this edge will be covered by bottom of the shingle one row up as shingles are glued onto the roof. Give the shingle a quick dip into the paint getting all but the very top covered in paint. At this point, the shingle will have too much paint on it. Remove the excess paint with a few quick strokes of your brush. Remember to keep removing excess paint from your brush as your go. Place the painted shingle down on your drying area. For painted shingles, I always use aluminum foil (shiny side up) on top of my cookie sheet or drying boards and typically do not have any real ‘shingle sticking to the foil’ issues after the paint has dried. (Wax paper might work just as well, but I don’t really know as I’ve never tried it.) To keep up your speed, you need to go through as few motions as possible. For example, pick up the shingle only once and don’t put down until your done with it, when you put it down, place it where you will want it until after it has dried (so you don’t need to move it again), keep the removing of excess paint from the shingle and brush to as few motions as possible. While each of these things will only save small amounts of time per shingle, all these small amounts of time when added up over say 800 to 1,000 shingles will turn into hours of saved time.

So, why paint the back side of painted shingles? Reasons include: It can help prevent warping, gives you the later option to use either side of the shingle as the facing side, and dipping / removing excess paint is faster than applying paint by brush to one facing side, the two side edges and the bottom edge. With the dip method, you should not need a second coat before the shingles are applied to the roof. (again, you can still expect a need for some touch up after the shingles have been glued in place on the roof).

Last but not least, if you think you have a significant higher number of shingles than you need, you can save some time by not staining / painting them all. You should use reliable means of estimating how many shingles you will need, and then pad that number by enough to cover possible under-estimation, shingles that have reduced coverage area because they have to be cut, and a few more for trimmed shingles that split out on you or otherwise don’t fit right and have to be replaced by another shingle. Keeping track of how many shingles you’ve stained / painted is easier if you lay them out in your drying areas in groups of fixed numbers (like 20, 25, or 30). Once you have started putting shingles on your roof, you don’t really want to find out your didn’t stain / paint enough of them to finish the job.

Adhesive of Choice:
This one is a no-brainer. You want to use a non water base quick setting adhesive such as Liquid Nails Construction Adhesive. Buy it in the tube for calking guns and cut the end of the tube at a near 45 degree angle near the very end so that you end up with a fairly small bead as you apply it along your roofing guidelines. Rather than describe all of the reasons why you don’t want to use tacky glue, hot glue, yellow woodworking glue, etc., I am going to just say trust me on this issue.

Roofing Layout Lines for Shingling:
For one inch scale dollhouses, the straight cut shingles tend to be about 1.25 inches in height and meant to be applied with a 0.25 inch overlap (which leaves 1 inch of exposed shingle face per row). Other, non-straight cut shingles might require different overlap spacing so as not to leave any exposure of the sub-roofing. I have found that it is much easier to put the layout lines on the roof panels while they are still separate pieces lying flat on my work bench. If you have roof surfaces that slope at different angles, you will find that the difference in slope / angles will result in some vertical skew of top/bottom shingle edges as you work you way up the roof with rows of shingles. The skew per row is cumulative over the slop of the roof panel. As you layout your roofing lines, you will want to keep this in mind and think about what the shingled roof will look like once the shingles are on in. If the skew per row is very small, you might elect to compensate for it with a slight increase in overlap on the roof panels that achieve greater vertical coverage per row of shingles. One other factor to bear in mind is that often times, the top row of shingles will need to be cut shorter in height to fit properly. To avoid having this look a bit odd, you will want to not have the top row of shingles not be too tall or too short. This might require a slight tweak of overlap in all or some of the rows of shingles that lead up to this point. Roofing layout / guidelines need to be visible when the shingles age being glued on. Most of the time, these lines can still be seen if the roof panel is stained after the lines have been draw. If the roofing panel is to be painted, then you should decide if you want to paint first and then apply the guidelines or lay down the guidelines and then paint being careful not to paint over the lines. (Painting first is often much faster as you can hit the whole panel either with a small roller or a fairly wide brush.).

Cutting Shingles to Fit:
Roofing shingles are generally not applied until after the roof panels have been assembled and are part of the house. Assuming this in the case, it becomes obvious that for inside corners, the shingles have to be cut and fitted before they can be glued in place. When dealing with inside corners, it is much easier to start the row of shingles with the inside corner cut shingle and work your way out the row to what most of the time is an outside corner or edge. This keeps you from having to get both the shingle width and the inside corner angle cuts correct on the same shingle. In this way, the width only needs to be such that the vertical joint be offset from the row below. My leading thoughts on how to get the angles right are: 1) Make a template by tracing the under lying roof panel onto a piece of paper before the panel becomes part of the house. 2) Make a template after the roof panel is part of the house. This can be done by holding a piece of paper along the bottom edge of the roof panel and then folding it into the inside corner. The crease in the paper should give you the correct angle. 3) Eyeball it, make the angle cut, check for fit and ‘tweak’ the angle with another cut if needed. When cutting shingles, I typically place the shingle on a scrap piece of wood and then place a sharp wide putty knife over where I want the cut. For cuts along the grain, pushing the putty knife down firmly will often cut the shingle. For cross grain or angle cuts, I apply pressure to the putty knife to hold the shingle firmly in place and then use the edge of the putty knife as a guide for cutting the shingle with a razor sharp utility knife. Making a nice clean cut can require that you not try to cut through the shingle with a single pass of the knife but rather make few passes to complete the cut. (A nice clean cut shingle is undamaged and requires no sanding.).

For outside corners and edges, I have found that attaching the shingle with some vertical overhang, and saving the trimming until after the glue had completely dried can yield a faster and higher quality result. When doing this sort of trimming there are a couple of things to keep in mind. The first is you want to use a razor shape utility knife or trimming blade. Second, you want to trim shingles in the direction of least removed material to most removed material from the shingle. Generally this will be from the bottom up. This is because if (really when) a shingle splits on you it will almost always follow the grain of the wood and thus split along a path that you plan on removing anyway. Cutting in the other direction can lead to having to remove and replace shingles; which can be done but not always fun. If you have to cut in the other direction, (like the very bottom of the bottom row) take it slow and easy to avoid shingle split. You don’t have to cut through the whole shingle in one pass of the blade. Shaving smaller slivers off until you get the cut to where you want it be can also be effective in avoiding problematic split out. Where two roof lines join, you can hold your blade at a bit of an angle and take a fairly close cut all the way along the edge. Now with most of the unwanted overhang removed you can go back and take a closer shave resulting with all of the shingles on that side having ends that are flush with the edge of the joining roofing panel. If you are working on an outside corner where two roofing panels meet, complete one side first (shingle and trim) then do the adjacent panel. When you fine trim the overlap where the two roof lines meet, you can shave the shingles using the shingles on the adjacent roof line as a guide. What you should end up with is one roof panel has shingles flush with the adjacent roof panel and the joining roof panel has shingles that overlay the edge of the shingles on the joining panel (and are cut flush to the front side of those shingles).

Applying the Glue and Shingles:
With the exception of partial (cut to fit) shingles, all that is required is a thin bead of glue right below the guide line for the top of each row of shingles. In general, you should be able to apply the bead of glue for an entire row then attach each shingle. Firmly press the shingle into place and hold it there (so it does not move) as you place the next shingle next to it. By doing a single row of shingles on one roofing surface and then one row on one or more other roofing surfaces, you should be able to go back to the first roofing surface and apply the next row of shingles without having to wait for the glue to set up more. If for some reason you can’t work this way, you should wait until the glue is set up enough such that the last row of shingles applied will not move on you while you are applying the next row.

Exterior Railings

If you are building a dollhouse with exterior posts, balusters, and railings, this is one of the places where lack of quality in workmanship can really stand out. It is also a place where you have an excellent opportunity to make your dollhouse look great. If you were to paint all of the posts, balusters, and railings white, for example, it will help mask minor workmanship issues. On the other hand, using different complementary trim colors will draw the eye to the details. The workmanship, good or not so good will stand out to a much greater extent.


Things to consider when assembling posts, balusters, and railings:

1. Balusters need to be straight and evenly spaced with enough accuracy for the eye to not be able to detect any real variance.


2. The ends of top and bottom railings need to be in line or you will have fit problems later when you go to install the sub-assembly to posts and/or the house. I strongly recommend using a square (or other right angle jig) to make sure that the top and bottom rails are both parallel to each other and that the top and bottom rail ends are properly lined up (form a 90 degree angle) while the sub-assembly glue dries.


3. When gluing baluster and railing sub-assemblies to posts and/or the house, use spacers (like scrap pieces of trim) to insure an even height between the railing and the closest parallel surface (such as a porch floor). You also need to make sure your railing sub-assembly remains vertically aligned. If an imaginary line though the top and bottom rail is not perpendicular to the horizontal, it might not show up very much when looking at it face on so be sure to check it by looking at it from the side as well.


4. Painting before or after post, baluster, rail assembly is a decision you will have to make for yourself. Either way, you can get a quality result. If you’re balusters and railings are going to be the same color, it could be faster / easier to paint after assembly due to the fact that you need not be too careful with ‘slapping’ extra paint down into the railing grove area. Given the pros and cons of each that I’ve become aware of, coupled with that fact that I never have balusters and railing the same color, I paint first and then assemble (and then paint again doing touchup). The most significant con of painting first is that fitting the balusters into the railing groves can become more difficult (due to the space taken up by the thickness of the coat(s) of paint). The wood is generally soft enough that you will still be able to get the balusters seated well enough by applying a little force. Perhaps the second biggest con of painting first is the all the handling of painting many balusters one at a time. If you are doing this, it helps to attach some strips of masking tape (sticky side up) to your work bench. As you paint each baluster, you can stand it up on end on the tape while the paint dries. Cons of painting after assembly are all related to the difficulty of getting paint coverage down into the area where the blusters go into the railing grove.


5. Need some post assembly paint touch up of different color balusters and railings? Which color do you do first? I think it is easier to touch up a railing where the baluster meets it than to touch up a baluster where it meets the railing. If the covering power of the railing color is greater than the baluster color, (typically darker colors will have better coverage than lighter colors) then I suggest doing baluster touch-up first. You might also want to note that color coverage is reduced when painting over un-sanded paint with a gloss (or semi-gloss) finish.

Here is an additional consideration, for those looking to continue to take things a step further. Many balusters / railing kits have railings with a grove cut in the length of it to insert and glue the balusters.

Having never seen a real house with such a grove in the railing, you can consider filling in that grove after the balusters are firmly in position. This can be a somewhat painful process (or at least very time consuming) but when done well looks so much better. Doing this is enough work that if your building a toy with a life expectancy of most children’s toys, I question if it is worth doing. On the other hand, if you’re trying to build something higher end, have the will and the time, then read on.

I’ve tried different materials as fillers including wood fillers, glue, and even paint. They all shrink as they dry and therefore require multiple coats to fill the grove flush with the rail surface. Sanding down excess filler isn’t a lot of fun either but if you need to do this, a small woodworking file seems to be the tool of choice because it allows you to smooth the filler flush with the rails and get in tight around the balusters. When filling the grove, I use a utility knife blade (without the holder) to work the filler into the grove, shape the top of it flush with the sides of the rail, and remove any excess filler. Keep in mind that shaping wood filler (in tight spots such as this) is faster when the filler is soft / wet than after it has dried and become hard. When you finally get the fill job looking good, paint touch-up will be required.

Glues and Their Applications

The more common glues I’ve found that dollhouse builders use include white tacky glue, yellow wood working / carpenter’s glue, hot glue gun glue, Liquid Nails (non-water soluble) and wallpaper paste.

Yellow Woodworking Glue:
Going back many years, I was always told that yellow woodworking glue was much better than any white glue when joining wood to wood. After building my first dollhouse with yellow glue for all of the structural joints (and mostly white tacky glue for non-structural joints) I was told by a ‘pro’ builder that white tacky glue is better for most of the dollhouse construction because the yellow woodworking glue joints can come apart after ‘enough time’ has passed. While I’m not expecting to see any failed yellow glue joints in the first dollhouse I built (in the rest of my lifetime), I am expecting the dollhouses I build to be around and in service long after I’m gone. With that in mind, I’ve taken this pro’ builder’s statement as true words of experience and have since switched to using white tacky glue in place of yellow glue throughout the dollhouse building process.

White Tacky Glue:
One very clear advantage of white tacky glue (over yellow glue) is that it dries clear so any small amounts of excess that you might fail to wipe completely clean won’t force you to have to go back and do paint touch up to cover the small amount of excess glue. This can quickly become a much bigger deal if the joint is between something like detailed trim (of one color) against the house or trim of another color. I’m not suggesting you cannot do a quality paint touch up job in cases such as this but I will say that it will take extra time that you need not spend by using clear drying glue instead of yellow glue.

As for application, bare wood to bare wood will glue up stronger than if one or both the contact surfaces have already been painted. The higher the painted gloss level, the weaker the glued surfaces will have. That said, I find that it is typically OK to not worry too much about gluing painted surfaces if it is a non-structural decorative piece, like gluing a shutter to the house. If we are talking about something more structural, like foundation, floors, walls, roof, posts and rails, then I would recommend bare wood to bare wood where possible. If a surface already has some sort of finish coat on it, like a pre-finished floor, then doing a little rough up with sand paper(like where an inside room wall is to be installed) is a good idea. I like to use enough glue such that some excess always squeezes out when the parts are pressed together. If the excess glue will be seen or will cause a fit problem for some other part yet to be installed, the excess glue pressed out from the joint should be wiped clean. I like to use a pretty damp rag to wipe off the excess glue. Old cotton tee-shirts make great rags for this sort of thing as they tend not to leave extra rag fibers behind as might a bath towel or face cloth type rag. The rag can be rinsed often with warm water, rung out, and re-used right away. For wiping inside corners, using some sort of object such as a dull pencil, flat head screwdriver, or edge of a putty knife , to push the rag close into a corner or along an inside corner joint works well.

Hot Glue Guns:
For most of the build, hot glue is not the glue of choice. I suggest that you not use hot glue for anything that requires real structural strength. There area some applications though where hot glue can work out well. If you do use hot glue, keep in mind that it does not allow much time to join pieces together, will not have a lot of holding power if the glue is spread thin, and can prevent a tight fit of the pieces if the glue is spread thicker.

Hot glue can be a good choice for places where the object might need to later be removed. When installing a built staircase for example, using hot glue to hold it in place can work well. The hot glue can provide enough holding power to keep the staircase in position but not so much holding power that the staircase can’t later be removed without causing substantial damage. Glue where the staircase meets the upper and bottom floors (not along wallpapered walls). If the staircase needs to be removed at a later time, old glue can be removed with a razor before installing again. Other places where hot glue might be a good choice include added decorative pieces such as a mailbox, house numbers, and garden hose being added to the exterior of the house or pictures, wall clocks, and sometimes ceiling light fixtures in the interior. And while I’m still in search of a better way, I use hot glue to install oriental stair runners (covered in a separate post).

Liquid Nails (non-water soluble):
This is the adhesive of choice for installing roofing shingles. For additional tips on gluing roof shingles, see separate post on roofing.

Wallpaper Paste:
Yes, there is such a thing as dollhouse wallpaper and dollhouse wallpaper paste. While I’ve come across a few different brands, they have all been either a real thick paste or a thinner paste more like real house wallpaper paste. The application is different for each of these. For the real thick stuff, a very thin coat, applied with a spreader like the edge of a credit card works well. I’ve been told that it is better to apply this type of paste to the paper (instead of the wall). This might assume that the walls are still bare wood (and have not been primed). When using the thick stuff, is important to get a fairly even spread of paste as squeezing out lumps, ridges, or excess after the paper is up requires some extra force to smooth out the thicker paste. The thinner pastes can be applied with a brush and can be worked like your hanging real house wallpaper. If you have already mastered hanging wallpaper for real, pretty much everything you already know is still applicable for dollhouses. One thing to keep in mind though is that dollhouse wallpaper will typically be much more sensitive to being wet (from the paste) and therefore stretch and tear pretty easy. I find it quicker and easier to apply most of the required wallpaper paste to already primed walls (instead of the wallpaper). For more tips on wallpapering see separate ‘wallpapering’ post.

Part Prep

Part Inventory:
The first thing to do is to do a part inventory and inspection. You should make sure you can identify every part in your kit with the parts list. On the off chance that you find you have any missing or damaged parts, you will want to know that it can be resolved before putting a lot of time into your project. Even without missing or damaged parts, it is possible that failure to properly identify some parts could result in you using the wrong part in some part of the build process and not find out until later when the part you should have used instead doesn’t fit right somewhere else. Although a lesser problem, failure to understand where a part goes and how it will fit might cost you some extra time further down the build process. An example of this might be not pre-painting (the correct color) some part of a part that will show after assembly and not finding out until you are ready to glue it in place. Unless it is just as easy to paint after assembly it will cost you extra time to either pre-paint now before assembly or after assembly. While many parts are pretty obvious (like an exterior front wall) others might not be. As I identify such parts, I will often label them with not only the part name but also with orientation information with arrows to indicate things like front, back, left, right, top, bottom, etc. Using pieces of masking tape as part labels can be helpful. Sometimes I will even mark which edge of part needs to overlap the end of an adjacent part. (Mixing an overlap up in assembly is sometimes very problematic.)

Square Window and Door Cut-Outs:
These cut outs are typically done at the factory with a router type machine and as such leave rounded corners. To square up these corners, take a straight edge along the straight part of the cut out and extend a guide line beyond where the cut will stop. Some kit instructions will suggest using a utility knife to remove the excess material but if you have a fine-woodworking reciprocating table saw, you can save a lot of time (and get very clean / straight cuts into the corners). If you have pre-assembled window or door frames, use them to check for proper fit. If you have door cut outs on inside wall partitions that will not be having doors installed, you should still square up those cut outs at this time because rounded inside corners will be problematic for any subsequent wallpapering or door trims being added later.

Sanding:
If the exterior of your dollhouse is (or will be) milled MDF, it is worth doing some sanding before painting. The best way to do this is with a piece of medium (about 100 to 120 grit) sandpaper wrapped around a tapered block of wood that can fit nicely into the place where each ‘clapboard’ overhangs the one below it. It should only take a few strokes along each row to get it smooth enough to look right when painted. Clapboards (like cedar shingles) are not super smooth on real houses.

With the exception of the exterior of the house body and already very smooth MDF panel surfaces, most all other parts that will get painted should get a good sanding before their first coat of paint. If after a coat of paint, it looks rough give a light sanding before painting again. If you are adding an additional coat of paint for coverage reasons and painting over a ‘glossy’ surface, light sanding between coats will get you better coverage per coat of paint.

Interior Walls and Ceilings:
I like to pre-paint all interior walls and ceilings with a flat white paint before assembly (while these parts can still lay down flat on my work bench). Painting all of these parts at once with a small (3 or 4 inch) paint roller makes short work of it and makes for a quality paint job. Smooth MDF parts will often take multiple coats to get good coverage but if you do all of these parts in one shot (and can start another coat before having to clean up your roller and paint tray) you can same a lot of time. On inside walls, I’m not looking for perfect coverage (as these walls are yet to be wired for electrical service and eventually wallpapered). On ceilings, I want the coverage to be good enough that any re-painting and/or touchup done after assembly doesn’t require any extra brush work in places the roller won’t fit into.

Why bother putting flat white paint on interior walls? If you do it in bulk as suggested above, it does not take very much extra time. The extra time spent doing it can make other (later) tasks easier which can lead to other time savings, increased quality or both. I’ll offer two examples. When installing tape electricity runs in tight places it can be difficult to follow pencil guidelines on a darker surface. This can be especially true going into and back out of an inside corner. Ease of seeing guidelines also applies to wallpapering but with wallpapering, you might also find that papering over a pre-painted wall surface gives you some added ‘workability’ in the wallpaper fitting and hanging process.

Tape Type Electric System Layout Lines:
If you are going to install the tape type electric system, placing layout lines on ceilings and walls is much easier when these parts can all be laid down flat on your work bench. For more on this please see separate post on electricity in your dollhouse.

Roofing Shingles Layout Lines:
Like other layout lines, these are much easier / faster to do when the part is laying flat on your workbench. For more on this please see separate post on roofing.

Complex Angles and Wallpapering:
If you have any complex angles on interior walls that are to be wallpapered, it can be helpful to use the unassembled parts to cut the pieces of wallpaper you will need (or at least trace these parts so you can have a template for cutting your wallpaper later). I am using the term complex angle to describe any inside or outside corner where the joint is not 100% vertical. Even dry fit cutting after assembly can sometimes make you wish you cut the piece of wallpaper before the walls got assembled. For more on this subject please see separate post on wallpapering.

Posts to Come - Tips

Suggestions for Tip Topics are Welcome!

It has been said that the world wasn't created in a day... and neither will this blog!

This posting is meant to provide readers with some insight on future posts that I'm thinking about making on this blog.

Rough Draft /Outline for Subjects I’ll likely write about

1. Going to Build a Dollhouse? What’s your Plan?
1. The importance of having a good plan and how it relates to both the amount of time your project will take and the overall quality you will achieve when you are done.
2. The makings of a ‘good’ plan
3. Understanding trade-offs related to differing orders of doing things
4. Pros of the divide and conquer approach
5. Doing things in bulk / Doing things in stages
2. Glues and their applications
1. Yellow wood glue
2. White Tacky glue
3. Hot glue gun
4. Wallpaper paste
3. Part Prep
4. Flooring – Things to Consider
1. Materials
2. Installation
3. Wood Floor Finishing
5. Roofing
1. Roof line layout and shingle under color
2. Need to sand shingles?
3. Stain, paint, other finishes
4. Adhesive of choice
5. Cutting shingles to fit
6. Electric
1. Tape vs. Round Wire
2. What’s the plan, and when in the build process should you have it?
3. Wiring in stages throughout construction vs. wiring after main construction is complete
4. Electrical outlets – Types and Locations
5. Electrical Connections
6. Multiple power feeds for future capacity and/or redundancy
7. Ceiling Fixtures
8. Power Sources
7. Wallpaper
1. Materials
2. Tools
3. Glue paper or wall?
4. Fitting (in general and those odd shaped pieces)
5. Clean up of paste that is squeezed out
6. Wet glue interaction with electrical tape connections
8. Exterior railings
9. Interior stair case railings
10. Exterior Trim
11. Making miniature framed pictures for your room décor

Common Questions

Top 5 questions I get from people who have not yet had the 'I built a dollhouse' experience:

Q: How long does it take to complete one of these dollhouses?
A1: Forever (if it stays in the family or with a close friend).
A2: First time around, for a 3-4 story Victorian, I would suggest you plan on about 200 hours to account for build, finish inside and out, and a reasonable amount of electric service throughout.
A3: Much like a real house, it seems like there is always more you can do. Having a deadline, of when the house must be delivered by, can be helpful in making the decision that you are done with that particular house. I think it is more a decision that you are not going to do anymore than it is a decision that you are done. Differing levels of detail and customization take differing amounts of material expense and time. But it is these customizations that make a house unique / truly one of a kind. If I were to build 10 houses all from the same kit, no two would be looked at as being the same thing due to customizations.

Q: How much does it cost to build one of these dollhouses?
A1: Might be more than you think.
A2: Again, like real houses, the range is pretty big. You can readily spend from a couple hundred dollars (USD) to well over a thousand dollars just for a kit. It's pretty easy to spend another $200 on the supplies you will need that are not in the kit and at least another $100 if you put electricity in such that you can readily install lighting fixtures at a later date. If you want some upgrades on trim, windows, doors, etc. beyond what is in the kit, you'll need to spend some more. Keep in mind that the overall dollhouse market starts down at well under $100 plastic toys (to much nicer plastic toys like the Playmobile 'Grand Mansion') and moves on up through wooden and other building material dollhouses extending all the way up to collectables valued at 10’s of thousands of dollars. (I would not be surprised if there are some valued over $100,000.00 (hope that includes furniture)). I’m trying to operate in a segment of that market that I’d like to describe as pretty high end toy / lower end collectable / and definitely family heirloom meant to last and be enjoyed for generations.

Q: So, if it really takes that long and costs that much, why do it?
A1: To truly understand my answer to this question, you would need to build one, be happy with the finished house and then see what I've seen. When the house goes to it its new owners, nothing really needs to be said. The joy and pleasure that can be seen in the faces of the little girls, the moms, and the grandmothers say it all.

Q: Where do you get all this stuff?
A: There is an entire world of miniatures out there that I had no clue ever existed. This ‘little’ world spans the globe with countless enthusiasts, companies, and organizations. By and large, for furnishing and decorating a dollhouse (both inside and out), if you can think it, someone has likely already made it. At some point (soon I hope) I will start and post a list of links to some of my favorite suppliers.

Q: Did those roofing shingles go on one at a time?
A: Yes
Follow on Question: How many are there?
A: The houses I’ve built so far have had between about 800 to a 1,000 roofing shingles depending on the house. (Given all the practice I’ve had, I’m getting real good at it!) Roofing tips is on my list of things to write about here.

How I got started building dollhouses

When folks see some of the houses I've built, many will ask how I got started building them. The very short answer is "it is my wife's fault". My wife has a weekly woman’s group that started out as a 'knitting' group but 'knitting' does not even begin to describe the types of craft and community service projects they have undertaken. It has been said that they could run a small country (and just for the record, I would agree). So when my wife found out that there was a dollhouse kit at a friend's house that had been started, (barely started as I later found out) packed up in a few boxes, and not touched for several years due to the lack of someone to build it, my wife told her friend bring it over and we'll have the Tuesday night girls do it. She went on to say I'll have my husband 'electrify' it. Later she told me about it and asked "you CAN put electricity in it right?" To which I replied "Sure, I am an Electrical Engineer... I can put electricity into most anything." It wasn't until the boxes of parts came to my house that I realized that yours truly was about to become the general contractor (and all the sub-contactors as well). Every week, when the women came over for their weekly 'knitting', they couldn't wait to checkout the progress I had made since they saw it last. Given all this encouragement, I continued to plow ahead. Somewhere about half way through construction I realized that you can build a dollhouse kit and have it look like crap or have it look pretty darn good. It is the attention to detail and precision work that determine which way things will turn out. By the time I was making the final finishing touches and getting ready to let this house go to the owner's granddaughter that it had always been intended for, I knew some day I would built another one. I just didn't think it would be so soon! About a month later I was coming back from a business trip in Europe and my wife picked me up at the airport. There was a brand new dollhouse kit in the back of the car. Part inventory started that night and part preparation started the very next day. As I write this, I've completed four dollhouses, have a fifth house in the build process and most of the materials for a sixth house.