The Daisy House Doll House Writing Desk Kit in 1:24 Scale

The Daisy House 1:24 Writing Desk Kit is a high quality, easy to assemble basswood dolls house furniture kit for a writing desk with an opening drawer, a work surface and two shelves, one with a pigeonhole. The kits are widely available from miniature shops and online. The construction details and attention to scale, clear instructions and inclusion of sandpaper, toothpicks and cotton buds to help aid assembly, makes these kits a great introduction for beginners who want to try building with wood, but don’t want to gather and cut out a range of wood pieces. Good way to learn the basics of miniature furniture construction.

The 1:24 scale or 'half scale' writing desk kit from The Daisy House comes with almost everything you need to build a detailed 1:24 scale desk except for glue, finish and a few tools. The kit includes instructions, a sheet of useful tips for finish and assembly, pre cut basswood parts, two grades of sandpaper, toothpicks and cotton buds. It helps to have fine bent nose tweezers and a mini drill or pin vice to finish this kit. The parts are carefully packaged in three separate zip lock bags to make them easy to identify.

The kit can be successfully built in under two hours and is a useful size for displaying books, writing materials, and a few keepsakes or decorations. The opening drawer is very shallow but is still a good feature to have as it can hold papers, tiny keys or similar items. The construction of this kit is a good introduction to building basics in smaller scales. Scale detail is excellent and the wood used is a high quality basswood with all pieces pre-cut to size.

In the photo above please note that I added small glass seed beads behind the brass pins which are supplied, in order to create larger drawer handles. The brads supplied for the handles would create handles roughly 3/4 inch wide in full size, which seems on the small size to me for a desk of this type. It is easy enough to back the handles with small seed beads to make slightly larger scale handles.

Like the other Daisy House furniture kits, an illustrated parts list makes it easy to determine which piece you need for each step. The clear instructions ensure even a complete beginner will have a successful building experience, but the writing desk requires very precise square assembly and is not the easiest of the Daisy House 1:24 scale kits for a beginner. If a beginner is careful, and doesn't mind checking for square, they will have no trouble assembling the kit.

There is lots of guidance in the instructions for assembling the kit, and clear instructions showing which sections are glued to which edges. The Daisy House suggest applying stain finishes before assembly to avoid problems with areas where glue stops stain from entering the wood. No wood joints, screws or nails are used, the kit uses simple butt joins and face gluing of parts to assemble. The only fiddly part is adding the handles, which are very tiny, and easily lost.

Materials Needed to Finish Your Bed Kit:

• A general purpose wood or pva glue. - Daisy House suggest Weldbond, or Tacky glue.
• Tack cloth or damp cloth - to remove sanding residue.
• Pencil and a Ruler - to make marks before gluing.
• Paint brushes - for staining or finishing.
• Paints or wood finish – Daisy House kits include the finish directions (complete with paint colors) for the photographs shown on their package. They also have suggestions for aging the finish.

For this kit I would suggest the addition of a pin vise and a pair of fine bent nose tweezers, both of which are used to fix the handles in place. Only two brads for handles are supplied. Make sure you are working in an area where any fly away brad can be found again. When making the kit, I lost one, and had to use a file to modify another brad to the same size head as the brad provided in the kit. Update - The Daisy House are now supplying extra brads in their kits for people like me who tend to lose tiny parts, great service.

Price and Availability - available online from Daisy House and other dolls house retailers, available in many dolls house shops. Cost $16.00

Disclosure: Review samples were provided by the manufacturer. For more information, please see our Ethics Policy.