If you've been hanging around here for awhile, you know I love to collect vintage toys. My favorites are Cabbage Patch dolls, Magic Nursery dolls and Fisher Price food toys, and the collection has grown quite a bit! I needed a place to store my collection that would be cute and fun but also understated...so another shed it was. Read on to see how I turned a simple metal shed into a playhouse:
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Here is the 6X4 metal shed that I purchased from Amazon. Once you get done peeling all of the protective plastic from every sheet of metal paneling, it's actually pretty easy to put together. I like this shed so much that I have one as my decorative garden shed as well (this post shows you both sheds together).
This photo shows you how the shed looks once constructed. No problem if you are actually using it as a shed, but since it's a playhouse I wanted to make things cuter. I didn't like the color or how a black stripe showed through each section where the panels overlapped.
I first repainted everything in a simple gray.
Notice the cap covered screws though? Something needed to be done about those...
...so I pulled out some leftover trim. The adhesive backed was enough for both sides while the plastic molding would cover the back wall.
I attached all of the trim with e600 industrial strength glue, even the adhesive backed trim that was already sticky.
Once dry I painted the trim with more wall color.
And then added a bit of gold ribbon trim just for fun.
Note - It seems like overkill to use the industrial strength glue for ribbon, but go ahead and do it this way the first time. I thought I could get away with hot glue here, but the ribbon fell down as soon as summer temps increased!
The shed comes with a metal frame floor kit, but no actual floor.
So my husband used a couple pieces of scrap wood that I then painted a contrasting shade of gray.
A wider length of gold ribbon made a nice baseboard.
With the interior settled, I needed to move on to how the furniture would be arranged. I knew that I would be putting some toy kitchen appliances inside, but wanted them to be higher than ground level.
A quick trip to the thrift store and I found two upright closet organizers and one shoe rack, $7.99 each. Though still in their original packaging, they had been in storage for a long time, look at the colors of the clothing in the photos!
I positioned the two uprights on their sides to make cubbies along the back. Notice that the far cubby has no support on the end.
A few bricks from the backyard gave stability.
Turning the upright organizers sideways meant that the unfinished surfaces were visible, so I painted them white.
Here is how the pieces look together, with the show rack hiding the brick supports.
Because the floor was two pieces of scrap wood, there is a seem along the middle. Just to be safe, I ran Gorilla waterproof tape along the seem to prevent any moisture from coming up. The floor will have a rug so the tape will be covered up.
And that is the playhouse interior and furniture. I'll have future posts with the decor and toys!
If you are interested in any of my other toy posts, you can check out these links;
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I hope you enjoyed this how-to post, thanks for stopping by!
-Jennifer
© Studio 27 by Jennifer Adams 2025
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Jennifer, your collection of Cabbage Patch dolls and their beds/furniture are adorable!!! When our son Peter (now 31) was born, we gave our daughter (now 33) a Cabbage Patch doll so she'd have her own baby to dress and change. She was always a big help with getting me new clothes in the morning or gathering a clean diaper. Fun memories! We had our dining room for a few years with no furniture so that was our kids' playroom and we had a Fischer-Price kitchen and some other things in there. Oh yes! A slide for the kids (and dolls) to slide down, and an old Walmart fold-up foam couch that the kids loved to sleep on. ;)
ReplyDeleteEnjoy your new doll/play house! I was going to feature it at this last Share Your Style, but it didn't fit the holiday theme. I think I will keep it in mind for next week as we move into the New Year 2026!
Hope your Christmas was wonderful,
Barb :)
It sounds like your playroom was a lot of fun!
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