DIY Dollhouse Tutorial + Printable Dollhouse Furniture

Literally 3 years ago we made this super fun dollhouse bookshelf, but being the busy mom that I am, but I never got around to publishing it because I had more ideas about what I wanted to create to go with it.  Well, I FINALLY got some help from my graphic designer to paint some cool furniture and then with the help of my old home show photos, I added to her lovely creations and the winner is you!!  Now you get a detailed plan for building this doll house and a HUGE set of printable furniture and decor for this month’s Canon partnership post.

EEK!  It is just so fun I can’t even tell you!

Dollhouse Bookshelf Woodworking Plans
With Magnetic Printable Furniture & Decor

*All Remodelaholic building plans, tutorials, and printables are for personal, non-commercial use only. Use it, gift it, but don’t alter it, sell it or otherwise distribute the print or the file. Thanks! 

Tools List

• Table Saw
• Miter Saw
• Drill
• Tape measure
• Pencil
• Brad Nail gun
• 1 ¼” 18ga brad nails
• Router
• Circular Saw
• Jig Saw
• Paint tools

Materials List

• (4) 1×6 Pine Boards
• (1) 1×8 Pine Boards
• (1) Sheet of ¼”  plywood
• (1) 36” x 48” sheet of sheet metal
• (15+) 1” wood grabber screws
• Wood Glue
• Thin Double stick tape
• Paint of your choice
• Stain of your choice

Building a Shallow Wall-Mount Dollhouse Bookcase

The printable woodworking plans contain all the cut lists and assembly instructions for building the dollhouse bookcase, assembling the open frame roof truss, and creating the front door facade section.

**NOTE**  We made the shelves shallow so that the doll house didn’t take up too much space!  However, you could totally make this with a 1 x 8 or even a 1 x 10 for the side depth to make the shelves deeper.

Tip: After you get all the pieces cut, paint and/or stain them the color you want before assembling them together.  I color washed our wood rather than painting it solid; see the tutorial for this technique at the link. 

Optional:  If I were to do this again, I would have painted my sheet metal with either spray paint OR the roll on version of the oil based spray paint in cans.

One thing you can do before you glue on the roof truss and door trim pieces would be to stain them a different color than the facade.  This just makes things easier and it looks fabulous. 

Magnetic Printable Furniture and Decor for a Barbie Sized Dollhouse

For the walls, I found some small scale neutral patterned scrapbook paper to use on the walls.  Technically even the 12 x 12 paper was to small for the spaces, so I had to tape the backs together and carefully match patterns.  If you do add a paper “wallpaper”, be sure to keep the paper only one layer thick, so that it doesn’t interfere with the magnetic printables.

As a side note, like I mentioned earlier if I were to do this over, I would paint the metal backing.  That way I could skip this wallpaper step.

Now, all you have to do is download the furniture and decor printables (above).  There are about 15 pages, you don’t have to print them all, but the fun part is that you have a huge variety of options, and I literally had so much fun re-decorating each space a few times for photos, and my daughters were dying to have a go at playing with it themselves!

I printed them on Magnetic printable paper that I ordered from Amazon, you can check them out for yourselves, I’ve included an affiliate link.  I actually tried two kinds.  Both worked great, although I liked the photo paper with a slight sheen on the printer better than the flat version of the non-photo paper, but the flat paper was a better price.  I have considered laminating the flat version (but I am not sure how well the magnets would work after, so just keep that in mind)

Once I got the paper I liked, I printed it out on my Canon PIXMA MG7720 printer, not only is it BEAUTIFUL (I LOVE the gold color of the printer), it works like a charm!!  To be safe I loaded one magnetic sheet at a time.

The beauty of the printable is that if an item is “loved” a LITTLE too much you can just reprint a sheet.

There are SO many options you guys for printables, here are some of the rooms I staged with the printables we’ve provided:

Or this:

Or this… I mean seriously the possibilities are endless.

We made the shelves shallow so that the doll house didn’t take up too much space!  However, you could totally make this with a 1x 8 or even a 1x 10 to make the shelves deeper, and then you could modpodge the printables to small checks of wood like cut up 2×6’s or what not to make the furniture more 3 dimensional.

We are so happy to be working with Canon this year to bring you all some easy do at home printer projects.  Please help us share the word about these fabulous projects!  And check out the Canon PIXMA MG7720, it is a beautiful and USEFUL addition to any office or craft room.

See more of our Canon print-at-home projects plus all of our printables HERE — these would make great gifts 😉

Watercolor Holiday Printable Set

DIY Farmhouse Signs Tutorial + Templates

YARDZEE Yard Dice Tutorial + Printables