Painting the interior of a doll house?

[wem]

I've bought this for dd1 for Christmas. It's still flatpacked but a friend's dd has the same one and it seems a bit gloomy inside with all the unpainted mdf. I think it has some layer of varnish or something. Would it be straightforward to paint it all before constructing do you think?

It does look a bit dull inside, doesn't it? If you google painting MDF there is lots - don't use a water-based product, etc. This says no need to remove varnish but you do need to sand it.

What I think you should paint above the fireplace bit is a miniature Mona Lisa. It would be a doddle .

Nah, never been keen on the Mona Lisa. I saw a nice picture of sunflowers I reckon I could copy pretty easily...

(thanks for the info tho)

Ooh, that's a good idea. What did you use to stick it up?

You can dolls house wallpaper and glue on ebay and in Hobby craft. It is much easier to do it when flat, before you put the house together iyswim, too.

I bought my DD a similar dolls house from toys r us & painted it with plasti-kote paint from B & Q.

Spent several evenings preparing with pva glue, painting, sanding, painting.

Looks nice, but not as nice as the ELC one..having said that you'll only be painting the inside.

I painted a dolls houses' door frames, window frames etc blue for my DS for his birthday recently.

Give yourself loads of time as you may need to do a couple of coats. Go slow and take your time, use good brushes. Best to sand the mdf so the paint has something to grip onto.
I used some sample pots of farrow and ball that I had and its worked well.
Use lots of masking tape on the bits you dont want to paint as the paint gets every where.

If you wanted to wallpaper it there's a lady on ebay who sells a cd with printable dolls house wallpaper for £3.99, i bought one for a house i was doing up and it is fab and so easy.

Just choose the design, (there are hundreds to choose from) print it off,(normal a4 printer paper) cut to size and stick it on, i used prit stick to glue it on and did the whole house in a few hours

The disc also has flooring, brick and tile papers as well.

Or scrapbooking paper sheets - probably cheaper than purpose-made dollshouse paper, and so many designs - lots look like wallpaper!

I'm just about to tackle the toys r us house for my dd too. There's some useful info on the Dollshouse Emporium forum. If you google Jennifer's printables (sorry on phone so can't link) there's masses of free scale wallpaper to print out. I'm going to glue mine onto thin card and then use double sided tape to put on Walls. Think it might be easier that way and also means I can change it in the future.