I painted the back of the dollhouse and used spackle to fill in any gaps. I didn’t apply stucco on the back since it will always face a wall, so painting was sufficient. The small left panel is slightly damaged because I mistakenly attached the interior edge trim to the wrong side after the glue dried. I had to take it apart and reposition it.
The wide side of the panel, which connects to the windows, is hinged, so I needed to turn it around to ensure it fit properly and didn’t reveal the side walls through the windows. This mistake occurred because the dollhouse design can be confusing regarding room orientation. The box photo doesn’t match the illustrations, so you must be very careful.
It doesn’t matter whether you place the staircase on the left or right, but how you hinge your panels is crucial. The staircase direction affects panel positioning, so dry fitting is essential to ensure everything aligns correctly. Relying solely on pictures can be confusing since they vary, including my own. Since this dollhouse was re-released, it seems there may have been an error in the box and website photos that don’t match older illustrations. Regardless of how you build your dollhouse, ensuring that your panels face the right way is vital for finishing both the interior and exterior correctly.
Here are some tips:
- Both front panels can be oriented in either direction before assembly.
- The large panel must be placed at the front of the larger rooms to ensure that the door leads to the correct room.
- The panels should align along each room's partition edge. One side of the dollhouse has large rooms, while the other has smaller ones, which is why there’s a large panel for larger rooms and a small one for smaller rooms.
- The magnet and magnet plate should be attached to the large panel.
- The large panel is unique because it has edge trim where it meets the small panel when closed. This trim holds the small panel in place and conceals any gaps between them.
- The hinge side of each panel is wider from the edge to where the windows begin. This wider side must have hinges.
- It’s best to leave hinging and assembling panels until after finishing your entire dollhouse. This way, you can dry fit them and identify which side is interior or exterior before finalizing.
- Avoid finishing these panels before completing your dollhouse to prevent having to disassemble any interior trim if they end up facing incorrectly.
- A good method for dry fitting hinged panels is using temporary hinges made from masking tape.
- Fit both panels at once to understand how they open and close, marking which side is interior or exterior with a pencil to avoid my earlier mistake.
Now that I’ve hinged the right panel and am working on its touch-ups, I placed the dollhouse on its legged base. I added glue to the base and set the dollhouse on top, clamping where possible with binder clips and using two-pound weights in areas where clips wouldn’t fit. I want to emphasize being cautious with this structure.
I still need to add trim around where the dollhouse meets the base for extra support and a finished look, but even with trim, physics makes this structure wobbly. A large lightweight object on thin legs can tip over easily. While it won’t break apart unless it falls from a significant height, it can tip over if not handled properly. Always support the structure by holding onto the roof when opening panels. This dollhouse is lightweight and easy to manage, but since the magnet is strong, you’ll need some force to open a panel; this force can cause it to tip if you don’t stabilize it with one hand.
