I spent about a week sanding down all the parts for the dollhouse. The large sheets have been reduced to these smaller pieces, which are now sanded and organized. I use rubber bands to keep similar parts together, and all the brackets and small items are stored in a zippered bag. The larger walls and floors remain in the dollhouse kit box since they don't fit anywhere else, while the smaller pieces are in a separate box for easier access. I placed all the shingles in a bag and cut out a photo of the dollhouse kit for reference.
Sanding these parts takes time. It's important to sand the edges to remove splinters and rough areas so that they fit together smoothly when glued. You don’t need to achieve a perfectly smooth finish; over-sanding can cause you to lose shape and detail on these small pieces. Use medium-grit sandpaper, as coarser types can snag delicate parts. A sanding block works, but I find wrapping sandpaper around a piece of wood gives better control, especially for reaching window openings and railings. You can use scrap wood from your kit for this purpose. Even for larger parts like floors and walls, using strip wood allows for better angles when sanding.
To punch out the slots from the walls and floors, I used the eraser side of a pencil. Due to the nature of this wood, some crumbling or breaking may occur while sanding, which is normal. There’s nothing wrong with the kit; just make repairs using tacky glue and binder clip clamps as needed. I had to fix several window frames that crumbled during sanding, and I also glued back together a back piece that arrived broken in two places. Repairing wood is straightforward: just glue, clamp, and wait for it to dry before continuing with sanding. Remember, the entire dollhouse will need to be glued together anyway, so repairing parts is not a big deal.
This kit includes siding and shingles, which saves you from extra expenses and eliminates the need to calculate material requirements or wait for supplies to arrive. Everything you need is included in the kit. The shingles and siding are made of birch veneer, which is ideal for tab-and-slot dollhouses. The only drawback is that they come in sheets, requiring you to separate each strip and shingle. If the birch veneer isn’t stored properly, it can become damaged, which I've experienced with other kits where I had to discard unusable siding and shingles. Fortunately, the materials in this kit were in good condition. You don’t need to sand the edges of the siding pieces; attempting to do so may split them. Leave them as they are; their exposed edges will be sanded once glued onto the dollhouse.
To separate siding sheets effectively, fold each strip one way, then flip the sheet and fold in the opposite direction—this usually causes the strips to fall off easily. Separating shingles takes more time. Thankfully, most of the shingles in this kit were nearly falling apart from their sheets. While shingles can be carefully snapped off their sheets, this process can be labor-intensive. Many shingles may split or not be cut all the way through, making removal difficult without damage. For this reason, I typically order shingles separately instead of using those from kits; however, I decided against that extra expense this time. You will need to decide whether to use the kit's shingles or order them based on their quality. When ordering birch veneer shingles and siding separately, they do not come in sheets, eliminating any need for separation—this is only an issue with dollhouse kits.
