How to design and build a cardboard dolls House.

I was inspired to build a cardboard dolls house by Ara at Bentley House Minis on Youtube. I wanted to build a witches country cottage complete with garden and greenhouse. I am going for a wonky plaster covered cottage with no straight lines just rustic charm.

I started by sketching out a basic design, I wanted to keep the main structure 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 onto this house over time but I thought this was a good starting design.

I started by gluing two large pieces of cardboard together with the grain in opposite directions for strength. I left it to completely dry weighted under heavy books to reduce warping. Once 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 bedroom 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.