The top trim fits together, just like the illustrations show and they are easier to put assemble while on the dollhouse, rather than away from it.
The side trim is a little more confusing. Basically there are two long wood strips that have to be laminated together and inserted on the sides like narrow side walls. You then place shorters strips behind them, between the floors. That will give you the thickness of three laminated pieces. You need for these side sections to be thick so they can hold the weight of the front panels as the hinges will be screwed there. Notice the illustrations. Though they appear crudely drawn, they are pretty detailed in which pieces go where.
I want to draw your attention to the dollhouse box photo and then to my dollhouse shell. Notice a difference? Well, there is. The dollhouse box photo shows the dollhouse with the staircase on the right hand side and I assembled my shell with the staircase to the left hand side. This was not done intentionally. I made a mistake. I was thinking of the Gloucester Dollhouse which has the staircase to the left.
Thankfully, I will not have to pull my shell apart in order to fix this mishap because in this particular dollhouse model, this will not affect the outcome of the assembly. All I have to do is flip the large front panel around to get the door to fit in the middle of the two windows as it's supposed to.
What I do want to emphasize is to be very careful of this common mistake. With this dollhouse, there is no harm but if you had a dollhouse with a winding staircase, for example, this mistake would have dire consequences. It will be extremely confusing for a newbie to invert all of the dollhouse parts in order to get a winding staircase to fit properly on a mistakenly flipped dollhouse shell.
Be careful and always read through my entire assembly blog before you begin your dollhouse so, you can catch my mistakes before you repeat them.
There are several pictures of the Cheltenham online that also feature the staircase sometimes to the left and sometimes to the right. This can be very confusing. It doesn't matter which side you choose to put your staircase, just make sure that when you hinge your front panels, they match up with the interior rooms. The front door should fall in the largest first floor room and in between the two front panel windows. To achieve this, you might have to flip your large front panel over, like I did, making the back face the front.
Once you get to this level on your dollhouse shell, there is not much else you can do it until the interior is finished. I suggest you finish the interior before adding the roof or the front panels.
