I know, a blog, how original.
I've been posting pictures of my Addams Family dollhouse project on instagram and a few people asked if I was documenting it anywhere so I've decided to start this blog. I will try to share as much of my method and my research as possible. Hopefully this will help someone else out, and if not at least it could be interesting.
I'll give you a spoiler right now, most of the building process is me sitting and staring at things and then swearing at them until they work, so don't expect much in the way of detailed tutorials, but I'll try my best!
So where do we start?
I've always loved making things, the more fiddly and annoying it is the better, I love all things spooky, and I love miniatures. Earlier this year, I stumbled across Bentley House Minis on youtube, and obsessively watched every single video she's ever produced. If you haven't seen her Addams Family dollhouse, go fall down that rabbit hole right now, I'll wait.
Are you back, are you in love?
Watching Ara create these incredible rooms from nothing, an idea began to form. This was something I could do, I thought, I could buy a dollhouse and customise it to my liking. I quickly learned that dollhouse kits cost somewhere between "eesh" and "absolutely not", not even factoring in shipping. I also really couldn't find anything that had the sort of layout or style I was looking for, so we were back to square one.
In my research on building your own dollhouses, I came across this image
I've read my share of house renovation and building blogs in my time, so I understand the basics of framing. To my delight, I found out plywood comes in A4 sheets, and long strips of square wood are available on amazon. This all seemed like it would be practical given that I have no power tools, or space to work with them. We were back in the game.
There are many different iterations of the Addams Family mansion, but the one I was most drawn to was the classic Charles Addams design in the original comic
I knew I wasn't going to follow this design completely, I wanted to incorporate elements from the movies, stick within the limits of what I could reasonably achieve, and also have it be functional as a dollhouse. I spent many hours scribbling layouts before I eventually settled on a rough one, but honestly a lot of this came together on the fly. I also had to reduce the size slightly when I realised just how big it was going to be.
Embarrassing plans aside, let's get on with the construction, shall we?
This was the start of everything. I built it to minimise the amount of cutting I had to do because I am lazy, and had no idea how to cut plywood without some sort of scary power tool. Each sheet of plywood is 30x21cm, and the lengths of strip wood are 62cm. Originally each room was one sheet wide, with the lower floor being one vertical sheet tall. It's all held together with Gorilla Glue wood glue, which is basically amazing. I left the middle open until I my staircase arrived (which took forever, fyi). I had a rough idea of where the stairs would go, but didn't want to commit to anything until they were actually in my hands and I could figure out exactly where they were going to start and finish.
I added the tower bump out on the front, hopefully you can see here what I mean by the lower floors being one vertical sheet tall. I've also started work on the floors at this point, but I'll do a separate post on them at some point because it's a whole process.
I originally planned to add scratch built windows along this side, but in the end I realised it really ate up the wall space, and it was too airy and bright inside. I like that the framing adds additional strength to the wall though.
More of the shell went up, along with the floors and braces for the internal walls. I left space for doors in multiple locations, as it was all dependent on the stairs. The door sizes I got by literally taking that one door you see in the front, holding it in place, and shoving vertical sticks against it.
I'm not saying I'm winging this entire thing, but I'm winging it.
That's probably all for now. I'll post more later on. As you've probably seen from instagram I've made quite a bit of progress before starting this blog. But hey, if you want to see how I became the gross dumpster person who shamelessly asks friends for their recycling, check back soon!