The Beacon Hill Dollhouse Day 6

I jumped ahead and, since I already know that it won't do a bit of harm to do so, I installed the front door. I was just too curious and wanted to see how it would look with the siding underneath. Well, it looks great. Just as I thought, the siding looks perfect under it and you can't even tell that it's really going under it at all. I used paper clips to clamp the three layers of door together tightly. This is very important. It's best to let them dry over night just to ensure that they are good and glued. You must sand down your door enough so that it fits in the opening. It will require a lot of sanding. It is best to do this with an electric palm sander if you have one.

I glued on the interior trim. I installed the porch foundation trim and also the steps. I continued siding as I went along in intervals.

I painted the openings for the bays. You have to paint the bay ceilings now or you won't be able to access them later. I will leave the opening surrounds painted only and not attempt to wallpaper in this area. It's way too difficult and you can't even see this area. I painted it the same color as the ceilings. This color is also similar to the wallpaper background I am using. I will be wallpapering the bay walls themselves though.

I glued on the bay walls. The bays have to be installed before you continue siding around them. Just glue on the wall panels and the foundations, not the roofs. You want the roofs to lay over the siding so they look nice and neat.

Also, don’t glue between the bay wall panels. Leave them loose for now. This flexibility will help you enormously when it comes time to put on the window top and bottom sills. If the walls are rigid, you will have a very tough time accomplishing that. I plan on using skewers in this area but I have to wait for the bays to be completely done before doing this.

I continued siding. The more I catch up with siding now, the sooner I will be able to continue working on the rest of the dollhouse. Basically there is nothing else I can do to it without finishing all of the siding first. The wall with the left bay is the one where strips of siding will have to be butted against each other because they are not long enough to go across the wall. Stagger the butted joints along the wall so your eye does not focus on them too much.

I glued on the mansard roof side trims. You have to do this now before shingling. They have to lay flat in order to be held down and if shingles are underneath them, it just won’t do. They might lift up your shingle pattern. It takes enormous pressure to keep them down. Use good glue for this and clamp tightly with masking tape. You will not be able to do both sides of a corner at the same time because then you won't be able to clamp. You have to do one side, clamp and then wait overnight for the glue to dry before removing the clamps. Then you can move on to the other side. You must wait overnight for the glue to dry completely or the pressure will lift them. It's important to get the bottom edge perfect, but don’t worry about the tops too much. You will notice a space between them and the roof at the top. This is supposed to be there because trim goes around the top of the roof, filling in these spaces.