Witches Dolls House

How to create a wooden floor.

Part Two

A witches cottage is simply not complete without old creaky wooden floorboards. I decided to make them from lollipop sticks. I prepped the lollipop sticks with my angle cutting shears and cut the rounded ends off.

I wanted a clean edge to the floors so I broke from reality and glued the sticks from left to right rather than front to back. I staggered the sticks so the cut edges were random. To get a good adhesion I used wood glue and while the floor was drying I placed heavy books on top to ensured the sticks did not warp.

Once the floor was thoroughly dry I strted making it look like an old oak floor. I added an initial coat of Rustins ebony wood dye then two further coats of Rustins dark oak wood dye. This made a lovely dark old wood colour. To age it up a bit I went in with black acrylic paint and just added dark patches here and there.

How to design and build a cardboard dolls House.

Part One.

I was inspired by Bentley House Minis cardboard dolls house to build a witches country cottage complete with garden and greenhouse.

I started by sketching out a basic design, I wanted to keep it simple with just three main rooms, a kitchen downstairs then on the first floor a living room and a bedroom in the attic. I intend to add a privy on the side of the house once the main house is built.

I started by gluing two large pieces of cardboard together with the grain in opposite directions for strength. One the cardboard was dry I started to cut out the walls, floor and roof.

I set the walls and roof pieces aside to work on the floors first. I wanted a slate effect floor in the kitchen and wooden floorboards in the bedrrom and living room. I decided to make the floors first as it is easier to work on them before they are in the house.

The Kitchen Floor.

I made the floor tiles from egg boxes as the texture was perfect for a stone floor. I prepped the egg boxes by painting them in shades of grey, grey/blue, brown, beige and cream. I painted them totally randomly without really thinking about it. The cream and light grey I dry brushed on to reveal the lovely texture.

I thought it would make my life easier if I created a template of the repeat pattern for the floor tiles rather than trying to make the tiles fit the floor space as I went along. I created three different sized tiles in 1:12th scale a large one, small one and a long tile and made a pattern which could be repeated over the whole floor. If you would like to download my floor tile pattern template simply click on the download button below.

Download Floor Tile Template

I glued the tiles down with wood glue for a good contact and adhersion. Once the glue was dry I covered all the tiles with mod podge to seal them in. This was an very important step as I intended to grout the tiles with poly filler and I wanted to be able to wipe off the excess grout without damaging my tiles.

The grout was applied with a small palette knife and the excess wiped off with a damp cloth, once it was dry I painted it light grey and aged it up wth moss green paint and moss flocking.

I am so pleased with this floor it turned out just as I had hoped. In the next post I will show how I made the wooden floors for the bedroom and living room.