I assembled, stained and varnished them. Always use glue sparingly when assembling these furniture pieces so that it is not visible on the finished item. Remember that wood glue does not dry clear so unless you plan on painting these pieces, you should assemble them using tacky glue instead.
You can stain before or after assembly. It's really more of a personal choice but keep in mind that stain does not penetrate glue and glue does not adhere to stain. This means that you will encounter issues regardless of which choice you make. I prefer to assemble first and stain afterwards. I just use tacky glue and I use it sparingly. I also clean up the area that I glued so that no glue spreads outside of the joint. I also sand off any excess glue that may have seeped into the surrounding area, after it's dry.
Window curtains hid the area around my large window that couldn't be trimmed.
You can visit this dollhouse gallery here.
