Building a Dollhouse From Ikea Bookshelves: The Pinterest Challenge

The craft gods were on my side over the weekend.  I have so many projects going on around this place, I half expect Martha Stewart to walk into my living room and give me a fist bump at any moment.  (Although, my lack of perfectionist tendencies would probably only get me a raised eyebrow and a naughty finer wiggle from the Martha.)

We're in the midst of redoing our downstairs bedroom, which we plan on using as an office/playroom.  Part of our redo involves getting rid of these beauties:  

Two Ikea shelves that I'm pretty sure every other person in the western hemisphere owns by now.  They looked really good in our old industrial loft with cloud-nine ceilings, but in our current cozy Victorian...they look pretty out of place.  

Instead, we're moving some other smaller Ikea shelves (we have a problem) into the office.  I had seen this photo:

 floating around Pinterest months ago and considered doing the same thing for Madeline.  

While I searched for the above photo on the mighty Internets on Saturday evening, I came across this project at Ikea Hackers:  

It was perfect!  First, it helped solve the problem of what to do with our old shelves.  Secondly, it resembles the dollhouse I've been coveting on Young House Love for the past few months.

Thirdly, Madeline has been obsessively building houses for her Little People out of blocks recently.  And fourthly, ("Is that a word?" asked the vacationing English teacher.) it wouldn't cost us a dime!  To top it all off,  I knew Young House Love was hosting the summer edition of The Pinterest Challenge, and this certainly fit the bill.  

It was like....sigh....crafting destiny.  Can I get an AMEN?!  

When I get an idea, I don't like to wait.  Never mind that I'm in the midst of painting the office, (More on this later) and planning a wedding (Only a month away! Bong!) what we needed to be doing right that second was building a dollhouse out of our old Ikea shelves.  

Luckily, Eric is a good sport and he got to work the very next morning after only minimal amounts of nagging convincing.  

First, he disassembled the old shelves.  I don't have pictures of this because I was at the library soaking up free AC with Madeline during that particular point in time.  

 When I got back, this is what I saw:

He left the two bottom-most shelves in place, using the pre-drilled shelf holes as a guide for measuring.  Then, directly above the second shelf, Eric cut 45 degree angles in either side of the frame to rest the roof of the house upon.  

Eric worked from the bottom floor up.  I'd tell him how many rooms I wanted on a floor, and he'd cut a piece of wood to act as the divider between the rooms.  He'd screw in the dividers from the floor above before continuing up to the next story of the dollhouse.    

Next, Eric used the leftover parts from the top half on the shelf to cut two sections for the roof.  He cut two equal length boards at 45 degree angles so that they could be propped up against one another to form a peaked roof.    

A small wedge of wood was placed under the roof's peak to add some extra stability, and to make screwing the pieces together easier.  On the back of the roof frame he screwed in this metal thing? that I'm sure has a fancy name to further join the two pieces of wood together.    

Once the roof was assembled, he was able to measure and cut two more pieces of wood to act as the top two floors of the dollhouse.    

Eric used some hinges to affix the roof to the frame of the house as the tutorial from Ikea Hackers recommended.  He also added some screws for extra stability.    

After more drilling and screwing...(No, that's not what she said.) Lo and behold!  A house!  

The shelves are made out of particle board, so they were a bit rough and sharp around the edges.  I went over the entire thing with our eclectic sander to soften and round the hard edges as much as possible.    

Our lives would have been much easier if either a.) our Ikea shelves had been white, or b.) I wanted a dark brown house...but it was not to be.  So, I got to work spray painting.  

I ended up using three cans of spray paint, but looking at the pictures I took this afternoon, the house could have used at least one more can.  Maybe, I'll just tidy things up with an old fashioned paint brush when I get a chance.  

At long last, it was time to decorate!  

I have a ton of leftover decorative paper from Michael's from a package I used to make our wedding invitations last week, so I decided to make good use of that for the wallpaper.  

When I spray painted, I placed the original Ikea shelf backing below the dollhouse frame to shield the floor from paint.  What I ended up with when I righted the house again, was a perfect white silhouette of the house.  

Using the spray-painted silhouette as my template, I was able to easily cut the paper to size to fit each room.     

I gently rested the house on top of the paper one last time just to be sure I like the colors where they were.  

We were also able to use the spray-painted silhouette as a guide for cutting the shelf backing to fit the dollhouse well.  The backing was pretty thin, so Eric was able to use a utility knife and his hands to break it apart.  

We used our leftover Ikea nails to affix the backing, and finally, we had reached the last step.    

I am very happy to report that I will not be wallpapering my house any time soon because this was probably the hardest part.  Ha!

I had the paper all cut to the right size, but it was pretty difficult to get it lined up in exactly the right place.  I ended up using spray adhesive, but it was so sticky, that I think it made my life more difficult than it needed to be.  I'm sure there's a better way to do this.  

As soon as I was finished, Madeline swooped in to play.  

I love that Eric and I made this for her.  I love that we were able to recycle our shelves!  And?  I love that it only cost us a few bucks to buy whatever that metal thing is supporting the peak of the roof.  We had everything else lying around the house already.  

It's not perfect...it's totally homemade, but I think the Maddie Bear approves.  She keeps saying, "Maddie's house!  Dat Maddie's house!"  and even Little Mumma seems to enjoy her new digs.  

This was an incredibly long post, and if you made it this far, you might be a super hero.

However, you should totally go check out these amazing DIY projects by the Pinterest Challenge founders if you haven't already.  They're where it's at...two turn tables and a microphone.  Thanks for the inspiration, ladies!

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