Half Inch Scale Alpine Dollhouse

This is a dollhouse made mostly of  recycled materials.

Last spring we had our bathroom remodeled, and wound up with a big pile of styrofoam sheets of varying thicknesses. It couldn't be recycled, and I didn't feel like breaking it into pieces and piling it all into our town trash bags at a cost of $4.00 a bag, especially since I had enough to fill at least 2 big bags. I decided there had to be a way I could use up at least some of it. I had recently built a dollhouse using rigid builders insulating foam, and decided I'd try and use the thicker styrofoam packing sheets for my next build.

                                     

I had recently been looking at charming pictures from the Disney movie Pinocchio, which inspired me to build an alpine style masonry house, since I had several large sheets that were up to 1 & 1/8" thick. That would translate into approximately 2 foot thick walls in half inch scale. My half inch scale house was to look like it was made of 2 foot thick stone covered in stucco.
I thought a barrel tile clay roof would be a perfect topper, especially since I'd heard of people using corrugated cardboard to build that style roof in miniature. We had a nice supply of discarded cardboard shipping boxes on hand.

Styrofoam packing sheets are composed of tiny balls pressed together, whenever you break up a piece of styrofoam you wind up with a mess made up of those little balls that stick to everything with static electricity.
First I had to be able to cut the sheets to size without making a huge mess. I have a Proxxon DS 115/E scroll saw which does a dandy job of cleanly cutting styrofoam. For cutting larger sheets or thicker pieces I used my bandsaw. I have in the past, used  my electric carving knife, but it didn't make as clean a cut.
Another way of cutting the foam is by using a hot wire. I've included a picture of one because the first time I ever needed to cut foam I had no idea of what a hot wire looked like.

My problem with the hot wire was that I just couldn't cut a straight line with it. I've found it better for cutting foam to make slopes for miniature landscaping.

I learned that styrofoam can be sanded to shape or made smoother. I used fine grit sanding pads for this, always stroking in one direction, otherwise the styrofoam would start to crumble. I practiced on a few pieces to get the hang of it.

I started building by gluing the left hand and back walls to a birch plywood base using Weldbond glue. I'd used it on my builders foam project and it worked fine. Next I glued down a thinner sheet of styrofoam as a base for the floor. By the way, I didn't add the right hand wall till later on in the building process. For greater visual interest, I wanted to make a step up from one room to the other. I didn't have a piece of styrofoam the correct thickness to raise the floor level in one of the rooms, but I did find an old piece of foam board that was perfect for the job, so I used it to raise the floor that was eventually covered in boards.

I wound up using styrofoam wherever I could. The brick hearth was carved from a sheet of styrofoam. The little raised area within the fireplace was made from a little block of wood, as the styrofoam just wouldn't cooperate on a piece that small.

I wish I'd used a block of styrofoam to do the central hidden part of the staircase. No, I made a wooden staircase. Later I told myself I was an idiot, as no one would ever see the darn thing and why did I waste so much time on it?

The stone floor in the lower room was made using drywall compound. After I glued in the final wall, I spread out the compound, let it dry a while, then drew out the stones. After the compound dried I used washes in assorted shades of gray to color the stones. Years ago I made my first stone floor using drywall compound and wrote about it here.

Treating the styrofoam walls
I'd read somewhere that coating styrofoam with gesso would make the foam stronger, so I applied several coats to the walls. Later, somewhere else I read about applying a coat of MinWax Polycrylic finish.
The Polycrylic did an even better job, so I added 2 or 3 coats of that too, followed by a couple coats of acrylic paint. I was quite satisfied with the final strength, but discovered that the walls could still chip a bit on the corners. I decided to try applying a couple of thin coats of Weldbond glue to all the corner edges, and that seems to have solved the problem.

I've already posted about using corrugated cardboard to make the tile roof.
My other bit of recycling was the use of leftover bits of mat board to make the walls and ceiling of the second floor bedroom.

There's still a lot of styrofoam waiting for me in the attic.

I just remembered the stump house I made for my front yard gnome garden. I carved a solid block of styrofoam for that. I'll have to add a post about that one.

Here are two more pictures of the house.