In order to continue the finishing of the foyer, the last two partitions have to be installed.
The first one is PARTITION #2. This is basically the back wall of the both the kitchen and the foyer. It will not go in without a fight. Remember, the dollhouse structure is very rigid by now because all of the glue has dried. It has no leeway whatsoever. This is necessary in order to apply finishes to the dollhouses interior properly. The problem begins when adding more components to it. The rigidity will not work in your favor.
This particular partition has four tabs that go into the ceiling and floor but the ceiling and floor will not give way. For this reason, I cut off all of the tabs except the left side one that goes into the kitchen walkway wall and the bottom right one, closest to the staircase. Even with cutting off these three tabs, a mallet had to be used with quite a bit of force, to help the partition go into place. Be careful with your staircase during this process.
After the partition is in place, run glue along the joints.
You can appreciate now, why no flooring, ceiling paper or any other wallpaper was applied beforehand, even though it would have been much easier to do so. It would have all been ruined. So, you have to do it the much harder way, with all of these items in place. The good thing is that the double front door opening will give you a lot of room to work in the foyer. It might be a little tight but it's still enough room to get things done.
PARTITION #3 takes a little bit of work before it can be installed. This is fine because nothing can be done in the foyer until PARTITION #2 is dry.
Because PARTITION #3 will be have one side facing the staircase, that side has to be wallpaper before installation. I primed and then wallpapered it. You should place the wallpaper about half way down from the top, to make sure it doesn't run short because once this partition is in, you will not be able to access the staircase side of it.
Before installing the partition, I stained the back of the staircase, where the closet door is. You also want to give one last look at the staircase opening. Make sure the edges are painted or stained to match the flooring of the second floor. The ceiling around this edge needs to be painted to match the surrounding ceilings because there will be a 1/8" of ceiling visible around PARTITION #2, along the staircase side. If you don't paint it, then raw wood will be visible in this small area. It may seem insignificant but at this scale, the smallest thing can become a big deal if it's not done properly. You will not be able to go back and fix it later.
After some minor touch ups around the staircase, I installed the partition. Use tacky glue to do this. You can turn the dollhouse on its side so you can add hand held weights to hold the partition flat as it dries. Make sure you look through the front of the dollhouse first, to make sure it looks correct before clamping down to dry. Be careful with your glue because the partition is wallpapered. Do not run wood glue along the joints after this partition is installed. The tacky glue is enough to hold it in place.
After everything is dry, you can prime the new partitions to get them ready for wallpapering.
