Because spooky girls need spooky dollhouses
It all began when i introduced my son to Scooby Doo. This started his obsession with haunted houses and all things with spooky, haunted, and creepy in the name. This is where the dollhouse comes in.
I had decided on making my son a haunted house to play with his Mystery Inc toys with. I'll admit, this was super fun to make and i was really excited to get started.
So heres the Fisher Price house i bought off someone on facebook.
Prime Time
2 cans of this Rust-oleum worked great! it covered everything and really STUCK. One coat was able to cover it.
Before priming, i had to remove all of the stickers on the inside. They were coming off on their own to begin with so i just started pulling. I did kind of get lazy with leaving bits of the paper on the house but the inside was supposed to look old anyways. Plus, it is a kids toy after all. I'm not looking to make it a masterpiece or anything.
Yes, these pictures are outside when it was still warm out. Trying to find all these before pictures, i realized i'd been trying to get at this project since the beginning of september. In real life, it's hard to accomplish things in only a weekend. Since I work weekends, its even more difficult. And in my case, I've got usually 7 or 8 projects going on at once. Probably not the best or most organized thing to do, but im working on that.
I do believe that waiting to start something only prolongs you actually accomplishing it. If i at least start it, it will get finished someday. If i don't start it, chances are, it wont ever get finished so id rather have 7 half finished projects waiting for me than having nothing to do with my time.
Here she is all primed up!
Step two was really just figuring out what paint to use. I used acrylic paint. Honestly just used the cheapest shit possible. I mean hey, its for a messy kid. So i painted all the house siding white, leaving the window trim the primer grey.
Next, i went over it lightly with a black wood stain. I know its a little odd to do but i used what i had. Wood stain really only works on wood. It soaks up easy but doesnt really dry on anything. So it wouldnt dry on the plastic but it did blend well with the white paint already there. I did find out that it would take the other paint off though if i wasnt careful. What really worked was if i put an extremely light amount of stain on my brush (light enough to be almost dry) and brushed sideways over everything. Really blending it with the white created a weathered or aged wood look.
After that, i did the same thing with a lighter grey color. An almost dry brush and blending it horizontally. The more layers of each color, the better it looked, i just had to be careful to not get carried away. Sometimes with painting, i never know when enough is enough. This time, i really had to stop myself before i pretty much undid all the previous work i had done.
I did the same thing on the inside, but trying to use dark colors to mimic an old victorian house. So deep reds, purples, and greens. Here, i also used the stain over these colors to age them.
The inside is very sloppy looking for many reasons but the most important was that my son helped me paint on the inside. His artistic development and creativity are important to me and i want him to know that he was helpful.
The floors were lots of colors blended. Just keep blending, just keep blending, blending, blending....
The pictures on the inside were scrapbook stickers from Michael's. While all the halloween decor was out, they had seasonal crafts. I thought how perfct these were for the walls of the haunted house! Ollie does talk about the pictures on Scooby Doo where the eyes follow you. These were close enough and still pretty cool that they changed at different angles.
The little pumpkins were also in the halloween section with the other mini town props. Some decorative moss used to create some vines climbing up the side of the house.
Lastly, i got some small wooden craft sticks (also from Michael’s. Just everything from Michael’s). Stained those with the same black i used on the rest of the house. These would be the old boards covering the windows.
The finished product was pretty cool lookin! Not difficult, just a bit time consuming. And now my kid has a haunted house to play with his Scooby Doo toys with.
I really did have lots of fun making this and i kind of want to make another one. There are endless possibilities and so many ideas i didnt even get to use on THIS house. Anyone want a haunted dollhouse?