years ago we made a second empire victorian doll house for my neice. It was about 3ft high approx. The whole 3rd floor turrets could be removed to reveal 2 bedrooms. Some of the short cuts we used: cheap:
put in hardwood flooring...use popsicle sticks or thin pieces of scrap wood. I just used elmers glue
other flooring...I glued fabric on thefloors for carpet, rugs even using perm. marker to make fringe.
smal print fabric for wallpaper, , make wainescoating out of wood too
used a tic tac box(took a pic of my fish tank)and cut it to fit the box. Glued rectangle boxes fo beds, to the floor and made headboards from fabric and padded and glued to the wall.
bought furniture at yard sales . when my neice got older every xmas we would buy a room setting ($$at doll house store)
Take a far away pics of your family and hang them on the wall.
We used poly urethene or something like that to seal the floors..
Oh yeah....on the stairs you can put runners of fabric for carpet..for the ballusters on railings we used the decorative toothpics from" cracker barrell" restaurant.
This brought back a lot of memories. Our neice loved the house. She passed suddenly at 34 years. and her girls hve no space for it so I have it. So in 30+years the fabric and flooring have yellowed but an antiqued shade and acceptable still.
Hope you have a great time building it. It willbe a treasured gift.
If I think of any thing else worthwhile I will PM you. jacqui PS make a room to resemble hers!