The Cheltenham Dollhouse Day 3

Assemble your dollhouse shell in the order indicated by the instructions until you reach the top, third floor partition. This partition is easier to put on after you put up the left wall of the dollhouse.

Clamp with masking tape as you go along in order to prevent walls from falling over as you fit in the floors and partitions.

The correct method to assembling a dollhouse shell is to use tacky glue first. This glue is thick, does not drip and holds on to your parts as you fit them in. After the assembly is semi-dry, you must go over all of the joints with wood glue.

Running a fan in your work space will speed up drying times.

This dollhouse is boxy and easy to put together. So far every area of the dollhouse is accessible for later finishing. Do not worry about the front panels or staircases as they can be fit onto the assembly later.

What I am trying to accomplish with this dollhouse is a semi-replica of my own real life townhouse. Of course the architecture is different but the windows are very similar. I may have to slightly bash some exterior details in order to accomplish this. I am sure I can make it look as close to my townhouse as possible since my neighbor even commented on how similar the Cheltenham box photo looked to our houses. I always thought it was cool to have a replica of your real home.

I had to find similar colors, of the exterior, in craft paint. If you're doing something like this, you can always use the latex paint you used on your real house for your dollhouse replica. Unfortunately though, in the case of my townhouse, the exterior paint was a custom made, mixed paint which is ridiculously expensive. They also only sell it by the gallon so that is a lot of paint for a very small dollhouse. Usually though, you can buy half pints of latex paint, which work fine for dollhouses and you can get exact matches.