DIY Cardboard Doors for a Fantasy Dollhouse!

[Music] hi everybody and welcome to the second to last episode of the cardboard house in this video i'm going to be finishing up some final projects such as making doors for the house adding some window seats and also a few drapes so let's get started with the doors first if you're new to my channel or the cardboard house project i will leave a playlist in the description box down below but this is what i have so far i have been making things from mostly household items or items that are easy to find and many of the videos have free patterns so if you want to join along and make one too those are available for you so now i need to add in the doors for a while i wasn't sure whether i was going to add doors or not but i got an idea on how to make them so that's what i'm going to be doing i'm putting a piece of paper just inside the wall area where the door is placed and i'm using a pencil to trace the general shape onto a piece of paper not the most scientific way to do it but because some of my doors are in odd shape this is going to be the easiest way without dealing with angles and measurements i have three door openings that i'm going to be making doors for this third one is at the base of the tower i want to give these a very fairy tale look like they were planks of wood that were nailed together to make the door so to do this i'm starting out by cutting my cardboard into half inch strips that's what i start with but then i do make some thinner strips as well i'm going to lay out my paper and then start using some of the strips and putting them inside of the shapes trying to figure out what the best combination is going to be so that i fill up the area i have two thicker ones and then a couple thinner ones that are going to make this first door once i'm happy with the thicknesses of them all i am going to get some thinner ones that are going to be my diagonal pieces that are going to hold everything together it's super easy to cut through cardboard with scissors so it makes cutting down the pieces to the right size really fast to hold them all together i'm just using a little bit of hot glue on the diagonal strips and i'm just going to glue those across all the boards making sure that i get glue on every single piece this is a super quick way to construct the door and i do end up putting diagonal pieces on both sides of the door so that it looks good from the outside and from the interior of the room i make all the doors using these exact same steps except making sure that they fit their outline that i have put on the paper so that i know that they will fit in the openings for the lower tower door i ended up making a double door and so i just connected two of the pieces on either side and didn't connect all four pieces now i'm going to be making some hinges out of some coffee stirrer straws and toothpicks these diy hinges end up working pretty well but i would suggest them for only light use if you want to have a heavier use door you may want to look into ordering a few dollhouse hinges i'm going to start out by cutting a half inch length off of the coffee stirrer straw and then gluing that piece to the edge of the door wherever i want my hinge to be i have chose to put them near where the cross diagonal pieces are but because they kind of are all over the place you can kind of just pick where you want it to be i used a toothpick to make sure all of my straws were still clear of glue i ended up with eight individual hinges that i need to create the hinge pin piece for i'm cutting again about a half inch worth of coffee stirrer straw and then i'm gluing them onto a piece of cardboard eventually i am going to be cutting this cardboard strip apart so that they're individual pieces i'm doing it this way just to save myself some time and fiddliness once they're glued on with a little bit of hot glue i can go ahead and cut them apart so i have a piece of cardboard that has one piece of coffee stirrer straw stuck on it that ends up being a tongue tier tongue a tongue anyway next i'm going to be taking a length of toothpick which is about a little less than an inch long i would say i'm going to add some hot glue and then i'm going to put it inside the straw and allow the hot glue to cool so that it is stuck within the straw this is going to be the lower part of our hinge and it's going to go underneath the upper hinge that's glued onto the door i'm going to do this eight times so that i have eight lower hinge pieces that will be eventually connected to my building and will hold the door on so now that i have all of those pieces done i'm going to use some joint compound this is the same stuff i've been using in each video and i'm going to start filling in the corrugation which is visible on the side of the door if you want to make this step go a little bit faster you can fill in the corrugation before you glue all the pieces together but i did end up finding it not to be too hard to get into all the corrugation even though everything was already glued together although i could not get into the interior sides but in the end you can't really see those edges very well anyway i'm also making sure to add the joint compound on the edges of the hinges it's at this point i decided i wanted to try and use the same joint compound to create some wood texture on my cardboard you can see that the cardboard has a wavy natural look to it when it's smooth i wanted to cover that up and make sure that these looked like old planks of wood that have been used to make a door i started by generally just putting on a little bit of joint compound at a time and trying to put it on in a straight line but by the end of doing this i just was slapping on a chunk and then i ended up spreading it out with the end of a tool making sure that i made the lines in the direction of the wood grain after the joint compound has dried completely i'm going to go back with some sandpaper and lightly go over the edges i'm not going to do it a lot because i do want these to look rather rough but then i'm going to seal everything with some mod podge or you can also do this with a little bit of glue because i mostly covered everything with joint compound anyway i didn't feel like i had to make the mixture that i've made in previous videos where i mixed glue and joint compound so this time i just put the joint compound on first to create the texture and then added the glue on afterwards i also went back with a tool to make sure that anywhere that glue might have gotten into the grooves i went back and made sure to create those grooves again so i had nice distinctive planks then of course we're going to paint it brown especially because this is supposed to be a wood door this is where the textures really start to shine anywhere on the door where i thought there might be a gap or a build up of dirt i went back with some dry brushing with black paint to define those individual planks i also used some light tan to create highlights on the very top of the texture so i'm just lightly taking my brush with almost no paint at all on it and going over so that that texture really shines once it's all complete i do the same exact steps for all of my doors so that they look identical and then i am ready to add one more little detail before they're attached to the building they need some fairy tale moss this is some woodland scenics moss you can get this stuff anywhere where they sell like model train type crafting supplies and all i'm going to do is add some glue wherever i want the moss and then slowly i'm picking it apart to make it a little bit smaller than it comes and adding it into the glue now to make some handles i'm cutting up some more toothpicks these are going to be some pretty large handles so i cut two half inch pieces and one one inch piece i'm using just the tiniest bit of hot glue to first secure the smaller pieces to the larger piece but i will be reinforcing it with tacky glue once the pieces are attached to do this i'm going to be adding some tacky glue all over the joint i just created with the hot glue and then i'm going to be using a small bit of embroidery thread to wrap around the entire handle the tacky glue is going to last much longer than the hot glue and the string is just going to be a very good bit of reinforcement so that these pieces stay together once it's dry i can go back and cut off any little bits of left over embroidery thread and then i can paint my handles i'm going to be painting these black but of course you can paint them whatever color you like if you're following along because our doors are made out of cardboard these are going to be extremely easy to install i just need to figure out where i want my handle to be and then i'm going to take a sharp pointy tool and i'm going to push into the very top of the door being very careful because if i push too hard the tool will come out of the back of the door i just want to pierce through the very top layer of the cardboard and once i do that i can take a tool that's slightly larger and slowly make the hole bigger and bigger until it is large enough for the toothpick to fit in after dry fitting the handle to make sure that it all works i'm just going to add glue to the two handle pieces and then put them through the door making sure that they touch the very back of the cardboard and then once it's dried our handle is officially installed in the door i'm going to do this for each of my doors and i'm going to have two on the double door then of course i have to go back with some dry brushing of the black paint and make sure that i darken that area because typically around door handles there's a lot of grime now my door is ready to install in the house to do this i am first going to have to temporarily attach my lower hinge to the door because right now it'll just fall out the bottom so i'm using some sticky tack to stick the bottom part of the hinge onto the door this way when i put it into the hole i will know where i need to cut out a little bit of my door frame to make room for the hinge because this project is made from cardboard and some drywall compound mixture it's fairly easy to cut into it it's pretty strong so this did take me a while it wasn't as easy as cutting into just plain cardboard but i was able to do it with a little bit of elbow grease because this was the first time i was actually trying this all i did was cut out enough room for the hinge to fit into the door frame but what i should have done at this point was cut out enough room for both sides of the hinge which i will show you later on now i'm going to be gluing in the hinges and they are stuck on the door before i'm gluing them in this ensures that my door fits and the hinges fit as they are glued in if i glue in the hinges separately i may not be able to get my door in place once that is dry i can go ahead and pull the sticky tack out of the hinges and then i have an installed door it's at this point that i realized i needed to cut a little bit more room so i had room for my upper hinges to move and the door to swing back and forth to fix this i just use my x-acto to cut out a little bit more of the door frame so my door could swing back a little bit more freely this is much easier to do if you do it before you install the door but i did manage to get it to work i'm installing the upper door in the same exact way as you can see i cut longer slits in the door frame so i have room for both my upper and lower hinge but i am showing this one separately because this is a tilted wall this wall tilts forwards i also did have to sand the door frame a little bit so that this fit in here which wasn't too bad i just had to go back and touch up some paint wherever i sanded but for this one because the wall is tilted forward i did have to cut off the edge of my door so that my door would swing open since the door leans forward it hits the porch area where the wood flooring is and it doesn't open all the way the nice thing about making a cardboard door is that you can kind of clip and adjust it as you go to make sure that your door opens the way you want it to open then you just have to go back fill it with joint compound wherever you snipped off the extra bits and then paint over it i installed it the exact same way with a little dab of hot glue and then i made sure that it opened just like i wanted it to for the lower door this is the exact same way except i am installing two different sides so i'm just going to make sure and dry fit it first to make sure both sides of the doors fit in and then i'm adding a little bit of hot glue gluing it in place and then we have double doors again this one is on a little bit of an angle so they tend to like to fall in but they can hold their own last thing i need to do is go back and touch up those little areas where i cut out the room for the hinges i'm just going to add a little bit of joint compound and then go back and touch up the paint from i think about episode 2 i knew i wanted to add some window seats into the upper area of the house because there are two bay windows yeah bay windows and i knew like i just love the idea of a bay window with a comfy seat where you can sit and read a book so these are pretty easy if you've made any of my other upholstered furniture this will be no problem the first step to creating the bay window seat is just getting a reliable pattern outline from the house itself i just basically stuffed this piece of paper in there and tried my best to use my pencil to go around the edges and figure out the shape then i adjusted it a little bit put it back in the house to make sure that it was right then i could take that pattern shape and transfer it onto some chipboard chipboard is like a cereal box type cardboard that's really thin the rest of the steps are very similar to my other upholstery steps where i'm taking some quilt batting but you can also use some unrolled cotton balls or you can use felt or you can use some old t-shirt material and what i'm going to do is i'm going to create layers of this batting on top of my chipboard until i'm happy with the thickness here i'm just gluing it on and then cutting it to the shape of my pattern you can see two shapes here because i'm making two window seats at the same time i'm taking a pencil to mark out where i want my tufting on my window seat and then i'm using a pointy tool to poke through the chipboard before i upholster the top i found this greenish material which i thought would go with the rest of the fabrics i used in the upper room which is where these are going to go and i just started wrapping it around my seat form trying to make sure that i cut off any excess material so that the bottom folds are not too bulky when it comes to creating a rounded upholstery you just kind of have to keep folding and keep pulling at the fabric until it is as smooth as possible lucky for me in this project this rounded edge will be up against a wall so no one will see if there are any imperfections i'm going to be using some seed beads that sheila sent to me thank you sheila and i'm going to be using these to create the tufting and the cushion i am putting the seed bead on a embroidery string and then i'm going to put the two loose ends through a needle and sew it through the top of the cushion until it is pulled tight creating this little tuft on one side in order to secure this so that it doesn't come out i'm going to flip it over onto the back add some glue into the hole that i just pulled the string and then add a little bit of tape while the glue dries once it's dry it will hold that in place then i can cut my excess string and i'm going to do the same thing for the other side now i have two completed cushions that are ready to go into my project if you are creating these for your own project you can leave them loose for example if you want to change out the bedding or the color scheme you can just pull them out and create new ones for me i am going to be gluing them in because i want them in here permanently to do that i'm just adding a little bit of glue and then pushing them down so that they are as flat as possible against the window seat area and here's how they're looking for some reason with this house i've always avoided putting glass in the windows there's something about having completely open windows that i think is very fairy tale-esque which is what i'm going for with this house but i still felt like they were just a little bit plain and so i'm adding in some drapes these are some very gauzy lightweight drapes and i think they just really add to the interior and a little bit to the exterior these are going to be super simple really fast to make and they are permanent once i install them if you're looking for a more detailed refined drape tutorial that is removable i will put a link in the description box below that has a much more long drawn out tutorial of how to make detailed realistic looking drapes to make the curtain rods for this project i'm going to use these bamboo skewers these are for like shish kebab type meals you can find them at dollar stores or at grocery stores for really really cheap i'm going to take one with the pointed end and i'm going to hold it up against whichever window i'm wanting to make the drapes for and i am going to mark it off just a little bit longer than the top opening of the window then i'm going to use my easy cutter and i'm going to cut it off so that i still have the pointed end on one side i ended up using an alcohol ink marker to stain these bamboo skewers but you can paint them as well i just happen to have this marker so decided to do it this way so things could dry a little bit faster once i have all my pieces i need to come up with my material i have these old drapes that i got at an estate sale a while ago you can see that i've cut into them a few times but we're going to make these into a much smaller drape real quick i just want to jump in here and kind of put like a disclaimer i am not saying at all that you should go steal somebody else's drapes uh your mom your grandma your uncle like don't go take their drapes or cut like a little square out of them for your dollhouse make sure you are using your own drapes or ones that you have found at a garage sale or estate sale um yeah i just i don't want to get in trouble for that i am using a rotary cutter here be very careful these are very dangerous if you are using these they kind of scare me but i'm using it here to cut through the drape fabric and i'm making sure that i have a section that is as wide as my bamboo skewer and then as long as i need it to be to either reach the floor if i want full length drapes or to cover up my window if i want them not to go all the way to the floor once i've cut my piece of fabric this is my super easy simple way to make quick drapes you're going to take your bamboo skewer and a sharp set of knife knives oh my goodness a sharp set of scissors and then you're going to cut a little hole and then weave your bamboo skewer with a pointy end back and forth through the holes you create i decided to create my drapes in two different sections so i ended up cutting my rectangle into two different pieces and now i'm just using the sharp end of the skewer to go back and forth inside of the fabric because this is a gauzy material it makes it a little bit easier to do it this way you can do it a different way with just gluing it straight onto the stick be mindful that some of these bamboo skewers depending upon the quality may have some splinters so be careful of your fingers once i have it fully put onto the skewer i'm going to pull it to one side and eventually in a few more steps i will make it so that the fabric holds its pleats once i have both sides of the fabric on the rod i'm going to use my ez cutter to cut off the pointed end and i'm just using my alcohol ink marker to color the exposed end then i flipped my drapes so that they were face down and i'm just going to use a small line of hot glue against the back and this is going to hold my fabric in place so that it won't move once it's installed in my dollhouse now that the tops are held in place i can flip it back over to the front side of my drapes and i'm going to start folding the fabric so that it folds naturally and looks like how drapes would if they were pulled to the side once i get my folds how i like it i'm going to take a clip and clip them in place while i work with a smaller strip of fabric and this i just cut from that same drape material but you can also use embroidery thread for this if you want something that's a little bit thinner i decided to fold it although i think probably it ended up being a little bit too thick but you can kind of play around with it and see what you like i'm adding a little tiny dot well it's kind of like a line of hot glue and then i'm taking my folded piece of drapery and i am going to push that into the glue and allow the glue to take hold once it's taken hold i can add a little bit more glue to the front and i can start wrapping the sides of the strip of fabric around the drapes so that it looks like it's being held in place i'm doing this very carefully because this fabric has holes in it it will have some hot glue that leaks through if i'm not being careful and could burn my skin now i do have the bottom of it still poofing out it does not want to stay folded but i will take care of that once i permanently install it into the house here's how it looks with both sides completed i ended up making two sets of these for two different windows in my house i have a third set that i'm making but this window is very different where it has two different window panes and they have different angles at the top so i ended up cutting them in half or cutting the one rod in half and i'm going to show you how i'm just going to glue these onto the rod instead of making them weave in and out so i'm just gluing the very top of the fabric onto the rod and i'm going to let that sit and dry once it's completed i am going to make it the angle that i want it to sit in my house you will see the window eventually when i get it installed but in order to make it the correct angle i'm adding a little bit of hot glue and then i am going to force the fabric to fold at the angle i want for my window and then i'm just going to press that down so that my fabric hangs at the correct angle that i need it to once it's installed i'm doing this for both sides to create the pleats in the fabric i'm doing it the exact same way where i am pulling down making folds and then adding the piece in the center with hot glue so that it stays in place now it's time to install them in the house as i said in the beginning this is going to be a permanent installation and they are not removable make sure to check out that other tutorial if you want to see how i make removable drapes but for these i'm adding a line of hot glue across the back of where the fabric is and as you can see i ended up fighting with this herb hanging from the ceiling so learn from my mistakes and make sure your herbs are clear before installing them otherwise you will have a hot glue covered herb hanging from the ceiling then i'm going to take a dab of hot glue pull down on the drapes and then glue that little knot that i created in the center to the wall then i'm adding just a few thin lines to the wall itself and this is what's going to tame the bottom part of my drapes and keep them close against the wall i'm holding them down and just making sure that that glue takes hold and then i have some drapes that aren't going anywhere i do realize that they are installed a little bit wonky but honestly the whole house is wonky it's really hard to figure out a 90 degree angle anywhere in there for the upper room this is the window that i told you was a little bit differently shaped so as you can see i am putting in the windows the exact same way but making sure that i have the correct drape on the correct side so that the angle matches and then i'm just slowly gluing the side the left side down and i am going to show you you can see the difference before and after gluing things down and how it really kind of tames everything so after getting rid of all the hot glue lines that are showing up everywhere now you can see the two drapes installed on the lower level one behind the couch and one in the kitchen area and then there's also one that's near that bay window that i showed you at the very top and i think these add so much character and i forgot to take video of the outside but you can see them from the outside and they're really really cute i will make sure to show you in the next episode of the cardboard house so that's all i have for you today i hope you enjoyed it we have one more video left in this series do not be sad if you love the cardboard house because i have many cardboard plans for the future so we are not done with cardboard at all but i am running out of things or space to do anything in this house if you made a cardboard house along with me or any of the furniture please make sure to send it to this email address that i'm putting on the screen right now make sure to put your title as cardboard house send me one photo and how you would like for me to put your name in the video and when i make that final video i am so excited to show some other cardboard builds because i really feel like during this past year we have been using these cardboard builds as a group activity and i've really enjoyed it so i'm excited to share some other people's work if you already sent me a photo do not worry i still have it so you don't have to resend it that's it for today i hope you all are staying safe and staying warm it's a little cold here in texas you might have heard i hope you all have an amazing week and i will see you in the next one bye in this video hello excuse me you look like you have no head for some reason with this house i why are you like this

Channel: Bentley House Minis

Views: 17,534

Rating: 4.9818869 out of 5

Keywords: miniatures, minis, dollhouse, dollhouse miniatures, bentley house productions, bentley house minis, ara bentley, tutorial, DIY, cardboard, cardboard crafts, crafting, diy dollhouse, cardboard doors, easy dollhouse doors, easy hinges, step by step, easy, wooden doors, fantasy doors, wood texture, hobbit, cheap, cardboard house, cardboard dollhouse

Id: 9ffJh3RSL64

Length: 28min 44sec (1724 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 19 2021