Dollhouse Miniature Exterior Finishes

Watch the video here.

This is a long video but I had so much I wanted to share with you all on the subject. After last week's front porch video a lot of you said you would like to see other options for the exterior finish of the project (or any miniature building for that matter)

I thought about how to present the different options in a way that would make sense and give the feel of the finish on a “building” without having to actually build an entire building. I decided to make a cube out of foam core and use each side for a different finish. I think it turned out to be a good way to demonstrate the techniques in a single place and I have a cool display piece out of it. I think this format might be fun for other techniques too, maybe interior walls or floors or??? What do all of you think?

So let's talk a bit about each technique here:

First up was the brick. Now really important when you do this for your building use a pencil where I used the pen. I just wanted you to be able to see the lines so you could follow what I was doing.

The lines for the bricks are ¼” apart and the bricks are each ½” long. Be sure to offset every other row to create the pattern if you are making the same brick pattern I did.

Next that wood siding from the 70's, I think the builder called it T1-11 when my folks built their house in 1977. If you drive through any neighborhood around here that was built at that time it is what covers most if not all the houses. Does anyone want to use it for a dollhouse, maybe. I'm not sure but I thought I would include it here. It is really easy to do and uses the same tack strip we used for the lap siding last week.

Now onto the tissue “stucco” or at least it kind of looks like stucco, maybe. Whatever I love this one and I used it on my big dollhouse (the Harrison) it looks great and a lot of people ask how I did it.

I couldn't do this tutorial and not do the egg carton stones. You can make them any shape you want, I decided to go with a more free form stone this time. Since the material is basically free and you can cut it any shape you want you can make any type of stone you want with this one. Feel free to use regular grout if you have it on hand or the caulking I used today.

Another stucco like finish can be made by adding sand to regular paint to make thick textured paste that can be applied to the walls. This also looks great especially when painted a pale color. I think it would also benefit from a light wash of a yellow tone but I didn't have time this week.

Since we just did the “lap siding” last week I applied that to the cube off camera and just painted it on camera this week.

So now you have 6 options for the exterior of you miniature building. It would be fun to mix some of these to create a really special building.

If you have another finish you would like to see me do let me know. Maybe when we get 6 more ideas we can do another cube full of them.