The Jewelbox Dollhouse

Here's the bathroom from my one-day jewelbox dollhouse project. It's just two inches wide!

And here's the whole house. It's 10.5 inches wide and 8 inches high; I think the scale is 48:1, or one quarter-inch to the foot.

The catalyst for this project was threefold. First, I needed a break after three weeks of intense work. Second, there was nasty freezing rain all afternoon. Third, I've been wondering what to do with this complete houseful of cheap Hong Kong-made plastic dollhouse furniture. It came in one of the lots I occasionally buy on Kijiji, and I felt I should either use it or give it away.

So the other day, as I was looking through my extra bits and pieces to pick out a few items for a friend, I was reminded of this little hanging jewelbox or kitch display unit. It also came in a (different) lot of second-hand dollhouse furniture. A lightbulb went on!

Here is stage one of taking the jewelbox apart. Luckily, it was only fastened with tiny nails and even tinier staples: no glue. As you can see from the picture above, I slightly reconfigured the dividers. It was my sweetie Jonathan who pointed out that the drawer could make an extra room (I knocked the back off it so the "floor" wouldn't be too thick.

After that, it was just a question of sticking it back together, adding a few scraps of wallpaper, carpeting and some tiny leftover bits of plastic tiles, lightly gluing the furniture in place and painting the outside to hide dirt, dings and nail holes.

The plastic furniture turned out to be remarkably detailed for something that only cost $1.50 when it was bought new. (Mind you, that may well have been 40 years ago, when $1.50 went a bit further than it does now—but, still.)

Here's the attic study...

The bedroom...

The kitchen, complete with icebox, dry sink and cast-iron stove
...

The upstairs landing, with the telephone on the wall...

...and the dining room (I glued some minuscule squares of fabric to the chair seats).

The original box had a hook for hanging, so I stuck it back on, and here's the finished product in place hanging from a shelf in my office.