Dollhouse Bookcase from Santa's Workshop

This past Christmas I built this dollhouse bookcase for my 3 year old daughter. I got the plan from ana-white.com

Check it out, it's a great web site for getting plans or just ideas for plans. Thank-you Ana :)  I built mine out of plywood and made a few modifications. I routed dados for the shelves. I also added a pine face frame to cover the plywood edges. The back is beaded paneling. I painted it in the same princess pink colors that are in her bedroom. The final touch was adding a chimney and stuffing a Santa into it. She loved it!

It's really big and the shelves are deep, more like a bookcase / toybox. In fact, at first, she got in it and thought it was her house.



My daughter keeps books, games and some of her toys in it. She's starting to get in the habit of putting things back on the shelves where they came from.......well sort of.

Here's some photos during construction.

With the dadoes cut in the end pieces and the shelves

cut to size, it's glue-up time......I have a lot of pipe clamps.

I mapped out the doors and windows and drilled holes in each corner. Then 

I used my jigsaw to cut out the openings. I squared up the corners with a chisel.

Here it is all assembled, ready for priming and painting.

I painted the beaded panel backing before I attached it.

Hooray!! Christmas Day!!

It was nice to have at least one gift under the tree not made in China.

My daughter is the funniest little girl ever. I never know what's coming next. A few days before Christmas we were sitting on the couch. I had a tank top T-shirt on and she saw that I had hair under my arms. She said "What's that Daddy?" I told her it was hair and she got a real puzzled look on her face, furrowed her brow and said "Oh that's not good Daddy...you should take it out and put it on your head." (as my hair follicles are somewhat challenged) My wife is doing her best not to laugh. I tell her that I don't think that's such a good idea. She gets that puzzled look again and says "Daddy, I'm going to get you some hair for Christmas." My wife is now unsuccessfully stifling her laughter. I look at my daughter and then at my overly amused wife and tell her "OK, just make sure it doesn't come with a chin strap."

DSR