Bookshelf Fire Station

At our house, the toy closet mostly consists of legos, trucks, and trains. So when my boys see a doll house in toy stores, waiting rooms or friends houses, they love to play with it. I have been considering buying them their own doll house and then I saw THIS picture of a dollhouse made from an Ikea bookcase. I was immediately inspired to make my own "boy" version. A Fire Station!

I started with this mini bookshelf from Target (sold as a mini cube organizer). 

It was the perfect size and the shelf spaces were just what I was looking for. The only problem was that it didn't have walls on the backside. This actually ended up being a good thing because I was able to easily decorate each wall individually. I cut pieces of foam core to fit behind each space. Then using different patterned scrapbook patter, I mod podged the paper to the foam core. Using mod podge is the key because you can keep layering scrapbook paper on top of each other. One for the wall paper, then a window cut-out, fireman jackets, etc. 

When the walls were dry, I used my glue gun to glue them to the back of the bookshelf.

Ok, I should back up... I need to mention the fire pole. Before the walls were glued in place, I attempted to drill a hole for a fire pole. It was really hard to get the drill to fit inside the cubby. I would suggest drilling a large hole before you assemble the bookshelf, or disassemble it to drill the hole. The pole itself is a wooden dowel rod cut to size and painted grey. I used a little hot glue on the top and bottom of it to keep it steady.

I created 4 rooms: 

Bedroom:

Kitchen:

Garage:

Bathroom

The furniture came in an assemble-it-yourself pack from Michaels. I would still like to paint it and add more pieces.

The firehouse wouldn't be complete without firemen! I printed out clip art images of fire fighters which I then cut out and mod podged to wooden peg dolls. I used about 2 coats of mod podge to really seal the paper to the peg dolls.

The top of the fire house is just wrapping paper tapped to the wall with a fire dept. logo glued on top of it.

The boys are having a great time playing with it! It is so fun to see the imaginative play going on.

Follow along on my Repeat Crafter Me Facebook Page for more kids craft ideas and DIY projects!

This project was made for the Mod Podge round of One Artsy Mama's One Crafty Contest.