There’s no crafting project I love more than upcycling something! As soon as I saw the idea of turning secondhand dollhouses into Halloween/spooky houses floating around on the internet, I knew this project was right up my alley!
Growing up I lived in a rural area with only two other kids on my road, and we never had trick-or-treaters so our Halloween decorating was minimal. I didn’t start decorating for Halloween until my husband and I bought our house in a neighborhood that gets quite a lot of trick-or-treaters. I’ve slowly been adding to my Halloween home decor and I try to do as many handmade or second hand ones as I can. This project of turning a used dollhouse into a Halloween house was my big project for this year.
I started looking at yard sales and antique stores for old dollhouses but never found the perfect one. But finally on Marketplace I found one that would exactly fit my needs. It had been very well loved (definitely not in perfect condition) and didn’t come with any accessories so I didn’t feel bad about
repurposing it. It’s pretty big - about two feet tall.
And as soon as I had it in hand I had an epiphany - this house looks just like the one on the cover of the children’s book my dad wrote for me!
*Flashback time*
When I was little, I loved bedtime stories. My dad is an author in his spare time and he would make up bedtime stories for me. One of my favorites was “Do Witches Take Baths”. I would ask for that one quite often! A few years ago he had it published as a children’s book (You can buy it here on Amazon - not an affiliate link and not sponsored but I am the main character so that’s pretty cool :) )
So after that epiphany, I didn’t just want to make this into a Halloween house - I wanted to also incorporate the story into the house to make it even more personal and special.
Painting the Exterior
Before I started painting I did scrape off the few small stickers that were on the outside. They didn’t come off very clean but some GooGone took care of that! I did make sure to wash it with a washcloth to make sure all of the residue was gone.
Plastic can be finicky when it comes to paint adhering to it, so I bought this multi-surface satin paint that says it can be used on plastic surfaces. But to be safe I did a test spot on the back of the house that won’t be seen to make sure it wasn’t going to slide off. Thankfully it worked just fine!
I painted all of the siding on the house black. I used dark green paint for the roof, burgundy for the porches and front railing, gray for the steps and some trim, and a fern green for the bushes. To make those colors a bit more muted, I added some black to all of them so the whole house would look a bit more seamless and not so cartoon-ish.
The only part that I left a little more vibrant was the purple front door. I wanted it to stand out a little.
My favorite part of the paint process was finding this really cool paint that has a prismatic shimmer to it and I love shimmery things! It comes in a few different colors and I bought two - a blue/purple and a red/orange (it was a struggle to only buy those two but I somehow found the self-control). I added these paints to accents on the house including the window frames, the floral trim, and the corners. This is just a sheer glaze that goes on top of paint so I did paint those accent pieces black first.
Decorating the Exterior
I had found a pack of small pumpkins and a pack of cat buttons that I thought would be perfect for a Halloween house. I did have to use metal trimmers to cut the button part off the back of the cats so that I would be able to glue them onto the house. I actually didn’t intend to use all of the cats but they were just so cute that I ended up finding a place for all of them!
To attach the cats and pumpkins I first placed them where I knew I wanted them. Then I simply hot glued them! Easy peasy!
The witch on the top of the house is actually a spoon holder to sit on pots that I bought on Amazon that I don’t really use as a spoon holder. But she makes the perfect witch for this house because her legs and feet actually grip onto the ledge! The broom is a piece from another project I had that I just repurposed for her. The broom fits perfectly into the space intended for spoons but I did have to hot glue it so that it wouldn’t make her off balance.
Decorating the Interior
My original intent was to cover all of the windows with this galaxy paper I found. But when I decided to make it into the house from my dad’s book, I had to leave some of the windows open to see the characters living inside the house (which I won’t spoil in case you buy the book). But I did use this galaxy paper to cover the windows on the sides of the house, the top round windows, and the two big windows on the upper floor as those wouldn’t have anything behind them to see. I thought the galaxy paper would make it look like something magical is going on inside.
Tip: Buy two sheets of paper as they’re not as big as you think!*
I traced the outsides of the windows onto scrap paper and then cut them out. They’re attached on the inside with just some regular tape and have held up fine so far!
For the first and second floor that the insides will be seen, I bought some black glitter paper and taped it up on the back walls and some matte black paper and taped it onto the floor. I also had to paint the staircase on the bottom floor since it is completely visible.
Tip: I could have made this easier on myself and just painted the inside black, but, as we’ve established, I like shiny things and the black glitter paper just added to the magical-ness.
I also have two battery-operated string lights that only get used at Christmas. So I added them to the floor of the second and third floors for some additional magic effect.
A last minute decision I made was what to do with the open balcony window on the third floor. It looked a little empty but I didn’t want to totally close it off since the string lights were behind it. I came up with the idea to make some curtains for it and I just so happened to have some leftover fabric scraps of a purple glitter velvet from a dress I made. So I cut out two rectangles and hot glued them above the window and voilà! That was exactly what it needed.
The Characters
I wasn’t successful in finding some characters I wanted while shopping so I improvised the characters actually pretty successfully.
I found these monster head buttons when I bought the cat buttons. So I hot glued two of them onto the steps on the first floor since they will be visible from the outside. But for the two on the second floor I had to figure out a way to make them taller so they’d be seen out of the window. I bought a pack of little wooden baseball bats that I painted black and hot glued the monsters to the handle. But since I covered the floor with paper, I wasn’t able to hot glue the bats to the floor like I’d intended. But I had some small wood slices from another project leftover that worked like a charm. I painted them black and hot glued the bottom of the bat to the wood slice. This actually ended up better than gluing them to the floor because this allows me to move them around.
The vampire is another Amazon gadget I have that’s a garlic press (hysterically ironic, I know!) While he’s definitely out of proportion for the house, I really didn’t care because he’s super cute. I just put him as far back as I could and in some shadows so it’s less
Finally, the ghost. He’s made from some polyfil stuffing covered with white scrap fabric and very professional black marker facial features. Again, he’s a bit big but I hope to find a ghost figurine one day to trade him out. For now, he works perfectly!
Final Thoughts
I am extremely happy with how this turned out. It actually ended up even better than I had imagined, and it’s proudly displayed in our living room. I will definitely use it every year! I worked on this project a little bit everyday over a week and a half, but overall it only took 5-6 hours. The longest part of the process was * literally * waiting for paint to dry.
I hope this has been an inspiration to make one of your own! There’s definitely a lot of used dollhouses that could be repurposed!
And another shout-out to my dad and his book! I hope you check it out because it really is a cute Halloween story for kids!
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