A chimney and a bit of paint

I decided a chimney would look nice, but all of those available online were for set roof angles and since our dollhouse is unique, it would be a pain to adapt a store bought one... so I decided to make one myself.

I really like the look of this one...

Dollhouse Chimney for sale from various outlets online

So I went about making one out of sheets of basswood, using an exacto blade, a ruler and a hot glue gun. It turned out like this...

My version of the above dollhouse chimney

I colored the inside of the chimney black with a sharpie before gluing the top on. There is another square glued inside for added stability. Next I painted it with primer and then painted it grey. I chose a color as close to cement as I could manage because then I can make the body "brick" with the grout color showing through.

Painted chimney

The next step will be to use a brick stencil to make the bricks. I need to get the brick compound and a stencil adhesive to do this. I will update with pictures when that is done.

Today I was also able to paint the house with a primer and then with the same grey as I used on the chimney. The hope is that I can use the same stencil and brick compound on the body of the dollhouse if it is easy and turns out well. I also primered the roof and painted the top panels dark brown so that it won't be obvious if the roof shows through the shingles.

So after I finished sanding the house looked like this...

You may have noticed that the staircase is missing. I was finally able to carefully pry it out for which I am hugely relieved. I couldn't imagine how I would refinish the hallway while having to work around it. Well underneath the stairs was a swatch of red and white checkered flooring that has to be original because my grandmother said she never removed the staircase since she's had it as a little girl. It was so cool to find a piece of the history of the dollhouse still there!

After priming and painting the house looks like this...

The inside of the dollhouse after primer

The outside of the dollhouse after primer and grey paint

The roof color before application of shingles

The grey looks a bit more blue than I was expecting in this light, but I am not going to worry about that too much until I can see it in natural lighting.