Finishing My Childhood Dollhouse

For our third dollhouse-in-progress, I’ve turned back to my childhood dollhouse, which my parents kept in the attic for 30 years and then cleaned up for me.

The porch railing and roof came off over the decades, with some of the trim pieces breaking. My parents saved all of the pieces and instructions, along with my dad’s handwritten checks next to the steps we did, and my mom’s handwritten notes about paint ratios.

The Cherrydale Dollhouse kit is available online here: Link

My first project was to redo the porch. It provided a great opportunity to use our shop’s Glowforge laser to duplicate an original part of the trim.

I was thrilled with how well the replacement piece turned out! I immediately got carried away designing different types of decorative trim for the house. Hope to list them in the Etsy shop soon.

My original color scheme for the house was pink and blue–hey, it was the early 90s–but now I am planning for a moodier look featuring dark grays. This Behr interior paint from Home Depot was just the look I was going for.

But no project ever goes exactly as planned. Once the paint on the porch pieces was dry, I realized that it would make more sense to finish installing the siding on the walls facing the porch. Otherwise, it would be hard to work in the confined space of the porch while cutting and gluing siding.

So I took a detour into finishing the clapboard siding on the house. My dad and I had attached two pieces to one side, but paused there. I measured and cut some of the pieces for the exterior side walls. I’m not sure that I have enough of the 3/8″ clapboard to cover the entire front exterior wall, but the pop-out under the gable is a logical place to use a different siding style, like brick or board and batten. Here are the progress photos of the siding.

I also enlisted my youngest to add shingles to the roof where I left off when I was a little older than he is now. Love that this is officially a three generation project!

Stay tuned for more progress on this special home—one of three works in progress in our shop.