DIY Barbie Doll House: Week #2 Cutting, Sanding, Priming

Welcome to the DIY Barbie Doll House. I've been a bit stalled on posting, but I have been working hard and will get two up this week, and two up next week. If you want to catch up, here's Week #1 DIY Barbie Doll House.

Everything was done, but I wasn't sitting down long enough last week to post.

Besides doing the scheduled Week #2 Cutting, Sanding, Priming there was still more planning and finally deciding on the appropriate lighting as well as ferreting out moldings, colors and fabrics. More on that later.

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 After consulting the plans...we decided on a couple of adjustments and made the doorways and stairways 1/2"-1" wider than originally planned within the 48" width of the house.

I measured out the windows, doorways, and stair holes on the pre-cut 1/2"plywood pieces. Hubby cut the large pieces on the table saw and the holes with a saber saw.

There are twelve pieces in this house: 2 roofs, 3 floors with holes for stairways, 2 side walls with window cutouts,  1 garage wall, 1 bathroom wall on bottom floor, 1 kitchen wall on the stairway (open in a triangle) to  stairway to third floor, 1 bedroom/bathroom wall on the third floor 

and 1 back piece with the roof pitch.

We did not make any exterior doorways, (imagine them on the open side of the house)

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On the bottom is the east wall of Ken's Bathroom on the stack of 16" wide sidewalls, floors and roof pieces. All surfaces were sanded with 60-grit sandpaper with an orbital sander. It has a dust bag attachment that basically doesn't work, so I did all the sanding outside.

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This is one of the roof pieces, which we have left the full 48" and will cut after we see it assembled.

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 After sanding it was clear the 'bad' sides of the plywood had a few knots and dark spots. Not willing to fight dark marks seeping through my primer and paint, I gave all dark spots and knots a good brushing of shellac. It dries quickly and seals up many imperfections.

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I use sponge brushes for almost everything but detail work. They do not last long with shellac.
Since I had 12 pieces to deal with and 24 surfaces, I spread out on 3 sets of saw horses. The weather was warm, with low humidity, so everything dried very fast.

Next step was to fill all holes, dents, scrapes and knotholes. I used a new purple version of Elmer's wood filler that dried between white...with little shrinkage.After doing 24 surfaces...the first ones were already dry.

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I rolled a latex primer on all surfaces very quickly because the weather started to look like rain...!

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The dollhouse pieces all dried fast. Now the hard part is trying to picture new colors in the new Barbie house. One reason we are doing this, is the abominable purple and magenta pink PLASTIC for Barbie. So we are hoping to make the house a home, with more realistic colors and furnishings. Not that there won't be SOME pink.

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Here are the middle walls for between the rooms with their doorways. It is a puzzle. Most of the materials used from now on except moldings will be recycled or vintage.

Now choosing, pink multi for the bedroom and bathroom, green & white for the kitchen, and white, green, teal for the living/dining room, and sand/beige/wood for the first floor Ken's Man Cave and bathroom + Chicago sports colors. Having had boys, I almost think I'm looking forward to the 'mancave' more than anything.

Ken's says so too, he's really tired of sitting in a pink and white bathtub and is looking forward to his
own shower in sand beige.

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Coming soon, DIY Barbie House: Week #3 Windows and Surfaces--COLOR!

DIY Barbie house Week 1 Planning
DIY Barbie House Week2 Cutting and Painting
DIY Barbie House Week 3 Windows
DIY Barbie House Week 3 Finally Color
DIY Barbie House Week 4 Assembly

DIY Barbie House Week 5 Stairs and Moldings
DIY Barbie House Week 5 Final Lighting
DIY Barbie House Moving in with Vintage Furnishings

All the opinions and photographs in this blog are my own, I have not been paid or reimbursed in anyway for my opinions or posts. Please do not use my photos without linking back to this blog without my permission. 

Thank you for your cooperation, Sandi Magle 

And always, thanks for stopping by, 

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Sandi