Door Hinges OMG.

[JCrutchlow]

Help. I am SO CLOSE to finishing the outside of my Pierce (begun in January 2021 for my then 5 year old daughter and I'd like her to have it before she leaves home for college!) and have left to do the doors and the porch railing before I finish decorating the inside and do the landscaping. I promised her I would finish the outside and inside (one floor, baseboards and molding, build and electrify chandeliers, and repair a piece of wallpaper) by June and finish the landscaping early next year. (I don't work on the dollhouse June-December because of other family and work commitments that take all of my time.) I need to get the stinking doors installed, and the hinges are DRIVING ME INSANE.

The doors are already assembled and finished. I have the itsy bitsy teensy weensy hinges from hades. I've read the More Minis blog on putting hinges on doors. I got one hinge in on the casing side, following her instructions. I have not been able to replicate that fleeting moment of success. I called in my husband as reinforcement. He has steady hands and is very good at things like eyeglass repair. I figured he could hack it. He spent 30 minutes hovering over it, intent, at the end of which time he said, "She doesn't need to have doors on her dollhouse. Our new story is that it is a very friendly and safe neighborhood. No one  has doors."

I am seriously considering taking it to a watchmaker and paying someone to make it not my headache anymore. Except that I have already sunk so much money into this project, and my little girl (now 8.5 years old) is proud that this is a project we have done together. And she really, really wants doors. With little "golden" working hinges.

Sigh.

Anyone have any tips? Any magic fairy hinge dust? Can you show me the way forward? 

I suck at hinges.

Problems (so far): 

1. The hinges shift ever so slightly when we attempt to mark where the hinge holes should be. 

2. The hinges shift ever so slightly when we attempt to put the hinge nails through the hinge into the pilot holes.

3. The casing wood tends to split. 

Edited March 10 by JCrutchlow

[havanaholly]

Don't forget that if you don't countersink those little b-------s they will bind...  This is why I opted for the chamois strips (you can glue the hinges on for decoration, if you must) and now I simpy pin-hinge the doors and s---w the hinges!

[FurMama]

I had the same problems on my first kit house, The Bobbie, so I super glued mine on. Now I do the pin method no gold hinges. When my dad built my first dollhouse he glued the door in place. 🤣 And it is still that way to this day, 47 years later. 

[fov]

Those hinges are very finicky and unfortunately they don't hold up well. If you've already made some attempts you run the risk of the holes getting too big and the nails popping out, even if you glue the nails in. If your daughter is going to want to open and close the doors a lot, it could lead to heartbreak later.

Just an idea -- and maybe not a good idea, depending on how you have finished the outside -- but if you want durable doors that you know she'll be able to play with and not have to worry about breaking them, I would look at the dimensions of commercially available pin-hinged doors, and see if you can easily swap them out (you might need to enlarge the hole slightly).

I see that the Pierce doors are arched. You could add a fancy pediment above the door to cover up the arched area.

Door options: https://miniatures.com/shop-by-product/building-materials/doors/?productListFilters=&productListPgNo=1 - look at the double entry doors, French doors, and Brentwood dollhouse door set.

 

[LPCullen]

I was never very successful at making those hinges work either. I gave up and my doors do not open