I love Christmas & also love a good dollhouse reno (you may have seen a few of my previous dollhouse builds & renos on here), so I decided to turn a cheap wooden dollhouse into a wintery Christmas cottage.
I started by giving the house a light sand. I had a tub of Polyfilla Exterior Mansory on hand so I thought I’d experiment with it and give the walls of the house some texture.
Surprisingly this was super easy to do. I used a scraper to apply it onto the walls (I did one at a time), then before it dried I used a butter knife to carve in the bricks.
Once it had all dried & hardened (approx 24 hours), I then painted it with a mix of black, brown & white acrylic paint. I watered down the paints so that I could easily blend the colours on the bricks before they dried to give it that “old brick” look.
I wanted the roof to look as if it was covered in snow. I wasn’t sure how to achieve this at first, until I went to Bunnings for a browse/brainstorm and I discovered expanding foam filler.
I did a practise run on a different surface first and it looked as if it would work well so I then sprayed it onto the roof.
The foam looked quite messy at first but as it can be cut, sanded & painted I wasn’t too concerned.
Once it had completely hardened, I used a blade to shape it and give it a smoother look. Once I got the shape and feel I was happy with I then gave it a light sand to smooth it. There were a couple sections that had large air bubbles but I just filled them with extra foam and then repeated the process of shaping with a blade and sanding to smooth.
I then painted it with 3 coats of white acrylic paint, leaving approx 6 hours inbetween coats.
The front door that originally came with the house was looking a little plain so I used a Stanley knife to carve in some detail & then I used watered down black & brown paint to paint it, giving it that old & weathered look again.
Lastly I cut some balsa wood to make new window frames for the house.
I painted them white prior to glueing on to the house, and then used a mix of black, white & brown paint to give them a vintage look.
For a little something extra, I also made a snow man using left over foam. I used a blade to cut them into shape, toothpicks to attach them, painted them white, used black paint for the eyes, mouth & buttons, and for the nose I used a miniature carrot I had made from play dough last year (originally for another dollhouse project).
While this project may seem complicated to do, it was relatively simple, just a bit of patience was needed. It was my first attempt at using expanding foam & mansory, and I will defiantly be using them again in future projects. ☺️
