Tuesday, November 2, 2010

How I Made the Bathroom Fixtures-Sink

Finished Bathroom

The 2 main goals of this dollhouse project is to spend as little as possible and to make it child safe....all while making it fun and realistic, of course!  The $5 dollhouse is a gift for 4-year old granddaughter, but I have to keep in mind that she has a couple of younger sisters who will undoubtedly handle the furnishings.  So "clunky and sturdy" is the name of the game for the bathroom fixtures.    If that's not a concern for your dollhouse, you might like one of these sets, all designed for children.
This Melissa & Doug Bathroom Furniture Set  is recommended for ages 6-10.  I think it's scaled nicely enough for an adults hobby!


Plan Toys has a couple of wooden bathroom sets suitable for ages 3-8.

Fisher Price has a plastic bathroom set.   Recommended for ages 3-7.


Although there's quite a few bathroom sets available to purchase in 1" scale,  most of them are either too fragile for my younger grandchildren or too expensive for child's play.....so I opted to make some out of wood.

Bathroom sink-unpainted
The photo above is the unpainted rough beginnings of the sink.    It is simply a block of wood about  3"x3" and 1.5" thick.  I added a couple rectangles of basswood to represent doors and gouged out a round "sink" in the countertop.   The faucets are 2 small pieces of dowel inserted in wood next to sink.    It looks real enough once painted.   Let the kids imagination fill in the blanks!   LOL     

Bath sink and cabinet
The photo above shows the finished sink along with a wall cabinet and some faux towels.   The faucets were painted silver and the countertop painted pink with a multi-color splatter technique (used an old toothbrush to splatter various colors).   Both the sink and countertop were top coated with a high gloss finish to add a little to the realism.   

The wall cabinet was rescued from the original dollhouse.   It was missing a door!   Made a new door from basswood and painted it all white.   I had a small piece of very shiny silver vinyl in my stash of stuff and used that for "mirrors".     The towels hanging on the wall are a printable set of towels glued on.

Oh...and the cabinet doors open and close with hinges made from tiny nails.   A nail is inserted in top of cabinet, going all the way thru and nailed into the top of door near edge.   Another nail is goes thru bottom of cabinet into bottom of door.  Works swell and is completely embedded in wood so should be safe.

In the above photo you can also see the finish molding around the window and the baseboard.   All moldings were made with white "fun foam" cut to size.  Much easier than cutting & painting wood and it looks surprisingly nice!

Next we'll make the tub!




No comments:

Post a Comment

Available at Amazon