Doll house furniture

The first piece of furniture I made: A sofa for the drawing room.
The excitement of having a completely ready house meant that at the first available opportunity, read the first weekend, I had to get started on the interiors. So the minute I got up, I started on it. Within a very short time my eight yr old was awakened by the sounds of the sawing and the filing. He was as enthusiastic as myself. My three yr old in whose name I was building it ostensibly, was excited at any increment.
Their father looked a tad disappointed that I was making no attempt at fixing breakfast. Both of us live in this eternal hope that the other will fix something scrumptious on weekend mornings. Its amazing that after thirteen years we still nurture these hopes. Truly hope springs eternal.

Anyway to come back to the technical aspects:
Furniture joints or wood joinery is very important for any furniture making.
I used a dove tail joinery for fixing the back of the sofa to the seat of the sofa.

This was a huge amount of effort for a novice like myself especially since I couldn't find the Arkansas stone to sharpen the chisel. Once I somehow managed to do this, I put fevicol on the joints and taped it so that it would stay in position and then left it for a day.
Then I decided to reinvent furniture making. I didn't see any reason I had to do a proper wood joint when no real weight would bear down on it.
My next implement was inventive to say the least!

Looks familiar? Yes it is a cuticle remover. I took that from my manicure kit. This turned out to be a huge blessing and I used it extensively. Soft wood can easily be shaped as well as beveled using the cuticle remover. All my future joints were made using this implement.
Next I needed to attach the arm rests cum legs to the sofa. I made a groove in the wood which was to be used as the leg cum arm rest (I first marked with a pencil the region of the joint) and beveled the edge of the sofa seat and even the edge of the back of the sofa, where it would meet the arm rest. This ensured a stronger joint as they sat snugly against each other.

The first drawing attempts to show you the groove though I forgot to show the groove at the rear portion where the back seat meets the arm rest.
The second drawing attempts to show how I made the bevel, so that the seat fitted into the groove.
Fit everything together and leave for a day
Once the basic wood work is done, the rest is 'easy peasy' as my kids would say. I just stuffed some cotton from my first aid box to give some padding, took a thick fabric (an old table cloth) and using double sided tape stuck the upholstery fabric to the sofa. I covered the arm rests as well with padding. After this was done made a cushion to rest on the seat on the sofa. This covered up any creases that might have been there in the underlying upholstery.Even if I say so myself I think it came out well. Lastly, I made tiny pillows to go with the sofa. Don't judge my sewing skills people. I'm one of those rare breed of people who doesn't know how to sew a button or thread a sewing machine.
If I can make this, anyone can.

The next thing on my agenda was building steps to connect the two floors , I planned to build it using popsicle sticks and the sides using particle board wood. It seemed too tiring somehow.
I decided to instead build a kitchen sink, this time using cardboard and those small travel jam//butter packages.

The cabinetry supporting the sink is just a cardboard box, covered with a white paper and faux doors made of another piece of white foam stuck on top.
I stuck corrugated cardboard on top of this box and then made a cut out at the top of the box to insert the jam container. This was to be my sink.

I happened to have the corrugated cardboard lying around but you could use foam of a different colour to give a vibrant look.

The faucet was a small piece of those tiny curves you have at the bottom of some plastic hangers. I painted this with a silver nail polish and stuck two beads on either side to show the hot and cold water knobs.

Two tiny beads were stuck to the door to look like knobs and the picture was finally completed by painting a button, gold again with nail polish and sticking it at the bottom of the sink
This looks like the drain
I stuck pink and white foam alternatively to give the look of a dado.
It's all been fun and extremely satisfying so far.
Wait for my next post on how to fabricate a cooking range.
Meanwhile, I will leave you with the happy note that today's breakfast was made by the M.O.H (man of the house).