Review: Make Market "Miniature Contemporary Home" dollhouse (Michaels)
tl;dr: Easy to assemble, hard to paint, easy to paper, needs trim. Works for the DIY Modern Mini 1:20 scale furniture Michaels sold from 2021-24. Okay for the current Michaels 1:12 furniture if you don't use much per room and write off the attic.
Before
The Miniature Contemporary Home retails for $50, same as the IKEA Flisat dollhouse shelf. It also has the same dimensions as the Flisat, with the added third floor. Don't pay $50. Wait for a good coupon. I used a 30% off online-only coupon to get it for $35 as a BOPIS.
During
This house slots together easily, though it benefits from adult strength. Do not paint or paper before assembly. Ordinarily, I'd paint first because this lets you mass-produce white ceilings without danger of drips. However, the MDF must bend a little for assembly to work, and any finish reduces its flexibility.
The slots in the roof mean you must paint the roof first -- unless you like having to repaint the walls after paint drips through the roof slots -- and it'd be wise to run blue painters tape over the underside of those roof slots.
This MDF hates paint like no MDF I've encountered before. It fought back least with the Clark+Kensington interior latex sample (Tapenade) that I used on the roof. The off-white Behr I used for the body, the other off-white I used for the interior ceilings (from a mysterious sample obtained at the Habitat for Humanity Re-Store), and the craft acrylic silver I used for edges of the tin ceilings were all miserable to use, requiring a ridiculous number of coats. The mystery white was so bad that I decided to paper all the ceilings rather than dedicate my life to another three coats.
On the other hand, it takes glue for wallpaper brilliantly. The interior finishes are a mix of pages from the 1972 Schumacher "mini prints" wallpaper book that I got at an estate sale and peel-and-stick pages from Dollar Tree and Family Dollar. I used tacky glue on the "real" wallpaper and had no trouble with it at all.
After
If you squint too closely, you can see that this house would benefit from some trim. As well as doing some clean-up on the attic-level walls, I'd like to apply 3/8" balsa to the edges to protect the edges of the vintage wallpaper. Michael's wants $21 for a pack of balsa strips; Ace Hardware doesn't carry them any more. I'm considering other options, as I really, really don't want to go to Hobby Lobby.
Trimming out the windows in any way will be a pain, as they fit no standard window. I'm also eventually going to cover the roof gaps with wooden birds.
Let's do the tour.
Kitchen: The "polished cement" floor (from Dollar Tree peel-and-stick) is something I especially wanted to do: in the neighborhood where I live now, pulling up the carpet and polishing the concrete underneath is a common low-cost rehab. (California: houses built from the 1950s onward are usually slab-on-grade.) The original 1:20 sink unit has a two-burner stove at the far end. I never got around to buying the now-discontinued full stove that matches. The blind-bag teapot is looking a little too blue for this room. The rocker may have been a dime store product.
Lounge: The size of the wallpaper samples necessitates piecing together coordinating pages to fit the whole room. This room and the kitchen both have "tin ceilings" from Dollar Tree peel-and-stick (that's being discontinued, so they were only 25 cents a pop). Most of the furniture is from the DIY Modern Mini line. The white shelving unit is a 1960s dime store piece, copied from Tri-Ang. Jukebox is a magnet. Beige chest is Strombecker that lost its top surface, repainted. The little elephant was from an MCM gift shop in Phoenix, probably long gone. Sasha, one of the Lil Bratz, is enjoying the view from the big window.
Game room / guest room: Only the basket chair, sofa, and the unpainted buffet table (to be painted later) are DIY Modern Mini. The pinball machine is a candy store find. The small harp -- no idea. The slot machine is a memento from Reno, Nevada. The pool table is an ornament from Joann Fabrics (RIP). The nightstand bookshelves are vintage Ardee that I found at an antique store in Glendale, Arizona. The little lamps were made by my mother. The dark floor is from Family Dollar. Nazalia is contemplating whether she has enough coins to pay the slots again.
Bedroom: This was one of the first color schemes I decided on, and possibly my favorite. The bed was a mystery find at the big antique store in Escalon. Meygan wants more pillows.
Bathroom: I really blame this entire project on Dad remarking that the hex tile peel-and-sticks at Dollar Tree looked useful for a dollhouse. The wallpaper here is also DT peel-and-stick, as nothing in the vintage book was white enough to work with the flooring. Yes, I need to trim over some issues with where the wallpaper meets the ceiling -- and also reglue the W/D doors. Everything here is DIY Modern Mini except the toilet: the line didn't originally include one, so I repainted an old Strombecker toilet.
Attic retreat: I got the walls papered and ran out of steam. In my defense, this roof is the least badly painted section! But I completely forgot that I hadn't chosen flooring -- and my lower back is so wrecked by bending over the house on the kitchen table that I'm not fixing it right now. Those are more Ardee bookcases. Talia has retreated up here to be left alone.
OVERALL
The finished-ish house makes me smile because I got to use my favorite stuff in it. As a simple project, it's fine. There's not much else that fits 1:20/1:18 and has more than 4 rooms and isn't Lundby-level expensive.
