Monday, November 28, 2016

Peg Doll House

My 3 year old grandson wanted a small doll house for his peg dolls.  I built this small wooden house that fits his peg dolls and playmobil figures.  It's gender neutral - so many doll house plans I found were for 12" fashion doll figures, or were very pink and feminine.


I started by buying 3 boards of 6" wide 1/2" poplar, each of them was 3' long.  I cut two pieces of poplar 15" long, and edge glued and clamped them together to make an 11 x 15 panel.

While that was drying, I cut out all the other pieces from the 1/2 inch poplar, except the base, which I cut from 1/2" plywood.  It was a little larger than the width of the boards I had, so I just used a scrap of plywood I already had.



I sanded all the pieces, rounding off the edges slightly so they weren't sharp for little hands.

To cut the doors and windows, I first drilled a hole and then used a jig saw to cut the shape out.  For the front door, I cut the door out, and saved the piece, adding hinges so his peg dolls can go in and out the front door.


Once I had all the pieces cut out, it was pretty easy to put the basic house together.  There were a few parts that were a little trickier:  the balcony and the stairway.  For the stairway, I cut 3 slots in a curved wall.  I made these so the steps would fit tightly, cutting them the same size (or slightly tighter) than the width of the steps.  For the balcony, the big challenge was lining up the holes that I drilled so the railing would line up.

I'm adding the plans here, in case anyone wants to make this.  I took pictures of all the cut pieces:



And here are 2 documents to print out to trace the pieces.  I used 13 slats cut from the poplar to finish the roof.   Both of these files should print over multiple pages, then taped together.

parts to print 1
parts to print 2



And here's an overall plan with dimensions:


So - hopefully on Christmas morning, Parker will love playing with his new peg doll house and all the peg dolls I am making him!  I might have to make some little furniture pieces if I have time before we leave.

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