Sunday, July 6, 2025

How I built a storage bench for our dollhouse bedroom . . .

Finished bench with tufted seat cushion,
 sliding doors and back support
.

       To make this bench for a dollhouse bedroom, you will need the following supplies: a long narrow box that is the approximate size of the end of your doll's bed, decorative papers, beads for the door knobs (3), white school glue, extra cardboard, Mod Podge, felt and stuffing for the bench cushion and two more beads to sew into that.
       The reason for choosing a box this size for your bench has to do with it's traditional placement. You do not need to position this bench at the foot of the bed but this type of furniture is made for this kind of placement. In our doll's bedroom, we sometimes put it against a wall; as you can see here. But, most of the time, folks put a bench like this at the foot of the bed.
       I decided to make the bench white so that it would go with more of our dollhouse furniture. Thereby, making it adaptable to a variety of rooms. Sometimes, it is necessary to craft the majority of your doll's furnishings in a neutral color. The white dresser, side table and rocker will probably all be used to configure different bedroom arrangements in the future. 
       As you can observe the bench is a basic rectangular box with one long side cut apart from it's front. This is where the two sliding doors are assembled. There is one narrow, long shelf inside of the bench interior. This was glued in place prior to the door being inserted. All of the surfaces of the bench were also covered with a masking tape layer and then decoupaged with tying paper. The only exception to this covering is the decorative paper glued to the fronts of the sliding doors.
       What makes the doors slide back and forth easily, without them coming out, are the narrow channels of cardboard glued to both the upper and lower horizontal openings at the front of the bench interior. The channels are made by the gluing together several long, narrow strips of cardboard, one on top of the other and then adhering these inside the box to create tracks or channels. The door closest to the front has it's own channel for moving in just as the door positioned behind it does. These cardboard channels are repeated on the top underside of the bench as well. Then I glued a cardboard strip across the top and bottom of the opening so that the doors would be fitted into their positions permanently. The tricky part is sliding the doors in after all of the surfaces have been finished. However, it is not that difficult given that the parts are made of cardboard and are somewhat flexible. If I where to make the same project out of wood, the doors would need to be adjusted inside of the channels prior to the finishing process on the front of bench.

Left, arrows showing where the channels are placed. These are difficult to see because I finished
all of the surround elements in white paper. Right, note the placement of the door knobs is
important. The sliding door near the front must have the handle in the middle and the door
furthest inside must have handles on both ends. This makes it easier for a child to access the
interior of the cabinet, no matter what position the doors are left open. Our dolls store their
board games and toys inside of the bench.


       The narrow 'seat' on top of the bench was typically added to many pieces of furniture prior to the 1940s. You can find these band mouldings attached to all kinds of vintage dressers, jelly cupboards and side tables as well. When furniture has band moulding around the bottom legs this is called an apron. So these attachments are distinguished by different vocabulary depending upon where they are located, top or bottom. Band mouldings help to keeps items secure on the top of furniture and aprons hide legs and dust underneath the furniture. (I'm only mentioning this because this information has yet to be recorded with clarity on the web in many places. It's old information that folks take for granted; you know how that works anyway.)
       I then crafted a purple felt seat cushion to fit on top of the bench. I didn't attach it with glue in case I needed to change the bench's appearance for a different project someday. But you may wish to permanently glue a cushion in place if you are making the bench for little ones. Cushions have ways of disappearing eventually when children are at play in the dollhouse!

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