My daughter is obsessed with horses, Im sure she’s not the only little girl who is going through this phase lol! I always thought if I had a little girl she’d be playing with dolls more than anything else. Turns out when your the youngest girl and you have an older brother you tend to pretty much play with anything! Lately in our house though she’s into horses. Santa brought a whole bunch of horse stuff at Christmas but before that we hardly had anything other than a few horses from the thrift store.
Now talking of thrift stores, its amazing to find a little bargain that you can do up when the inspirational DIY in you comes out 😆
My friend found this Melissa & Doug house at our local thrift store which would have been a lovely addition for my daughters dolls. However when I saw this all I could see was stalls and hay lol! This would be a perfect little stable/barn for my daughters horses.
So I got to work gathering up supplies I would need for this project. I didn’t need a lot as it was just a case of jazzing it up and making it more ‘horse’ friendly.
- A glue gun
- Some small wood pieces (we found these square pieces)
- Some craft sticks
- Some small wooden cubes
- Fake straw (easy enough to get from craft stores)
- Plastic stick on wall hooks (optional)
- Sand paper (optional)
Your wooden squares are separators for the stalls. You can set it out however you or your child want it but we set them in between wherever there was a window. This way each horse had a window to look out of. 😉
We also put down some sand paper for the floor although you don’t need to, the wood on the bottom works just fine too.
Line up your wooden squares where you want them and place hot glue along the bottom and the wall of the house. This way it sticks and secures better. You can always draw some lines where you’d like the square to go so that you can just put your glue along the line and then stick the square into place. The squares don’t have to be that tall. There are just used for separators.
We glued some of the small wooden cubes beside each separator just to hold it in place a little better. It shouldn’t move or come detached but considering your child will be playing with it, it’s better to have it a destruction proof lol!
The next step was decorating it with ‘hay’ to make it look like a barn. We found some fake straw that we used to put in each stall. It comes in a ball so you have to cut it off in chunks, then we stuck it down with hot glue. We also stuck some on the top floor to use for any other small animals like barn cats or hens. My daughter puts her horses upstairs too but each to their own I guess lol! 🤦♀️
I also made some fences that were easy enough to build. Just use 4 craft sticks and cross them over to make a fence shape. Use hot glue to secure the pieces and then stick a cube on each vertical stick so that your fence stands up. Hey presto you have a fence!
We were going to paint the house red to make it more barn like but my daughter LOVES pink so we left it the way it was. We added a couple extra touches like some plastic stick on wall hooks. This was so that she could hang her saddles, reins or any other horse items.
We also had a feeding basket which fit perfectly to the side of one of the windows. You can put your own finishing touches to it. My daughter then set her barn up with some fake grass for her ‘pasture’ and put her fences around.
The last thing that we did was to attach a latch on one side of the house and a hook on the other. This was just to secure it closed and so nothing would fall out.
The best thing about this house/barn is that she can transport it around, so when we go to grandmas house we can pack some of her horses and take them with us.
My daughter loves her little barn and hopefully she will play it for years to come.
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