Do not attempt to try and wallpaper the attic after it's constructed. It's just not going to work. You really need to get it all done before you assemble it.
First thing you need to do is prime the walls. Prime all the wallpaper side of every roof panel. This is always the side where the wood is rougher looking.
When the primer is dry, dry fit a panel so you can see where the eaves are. It's usually an inch from the bottom and sides. These eaves will be painted, not wallpapered, because they fall on the exterior of the dollhouse once the roof is installed. Mark the eaves line with a pencil.
You don’t have to wallpaper the back wall. It won't be visible from the outside since it will be facing the interior of the dollhouse. Just paint it to match the ceilings in case someone looks in through the windows. You don’t want it raw wood.
Now plan out your wallpaper. Gabled attic roofs tend to eat up a lot of wallpaper so make sure you have cut all your pieces for each panel before you begin gluing just in case you don’t have enough. If you don’t have enough wallpaper, then you have three options.
1. Buy more wallpaper in that same pattern.
2. Paint some walls and wallpaper others.
3. Take your wallpaper to an office supply store and attempt to print more out without a very noticeable color hue difference.
4. Patch up wallpaper, like I did.
I didn’t have the best pattern to patch because it has lines but it's pretty heavily patterned so the patches aren’t that noticeable. I actually only had to patch the middle roof. It would have been better to have four sheets of wallpaper for this roof instead of three.
After you have your wallpaper cut out, glue it on the panels. Make sure you glue the paper with the patterns all facing the right way. It's easy to glue a sheet upside down at this point. Notice in my picture how the wallpaper is only on the part of the panels that will show in the attic and not the eaves. You can clearly see the eaves are white with the primer.
After the wallpaper dries, paint your eaves any color you want making sure you don’t paint your wallpaper edges. After all of the wallpaper is dry, take a craft knife and cut out all slots from the panels.
Glue the back wall. In this dollhouse the back wall is basically a thin roof support.
Now paint and glue all of the supports to the roof panels. There’s three different types of supports and it's hard to figure out what slots they go into so just notice my pictures.
Now comes the tricky part. You will need a rubber mallet because this roof will not just fall into place. You have to hammer it. You also can't hammer it too hard because the back roof support and the two front attic walls are very fragile. There is hardly anything holding them up. Hold each of these parts with your hand to give it support so you can hammer in the panel.
Start with the side panels. Make sure the triangle support is towards the front of the dollhouse. You can get a much clearer picture of how the supports go as you assemble the roof.
After the side panels are in, put up the front gables. You can see how the side panel support, supports the front gable walls. Clamp. Give it as much masking tape support as you can so the hammering won't be too rough on the structure.
After the front gables are in, glue on the top flat roof. Make sure it's supports are facing towards the front of the dollhouse. Those support tabs will go into the middle front roof slots but not now.
Now you have to put in the side roof and flat roof supports. These were the only supports not installed before the roof was assembled. The best way to install them is to turn your dollhouse upside down. Once it's upside down, hammer the supports between the side panels and the flat roof panel.
Turn the dollhouse right side up again and touch up any paint on the supports. Don’t worry about the front middle roof right now. You will have to let this assembly dry over night before you can put that one on. Your roof is too weak right now to take any more hammering. You have to let the glue dry. Clamp everything well.
You can put the knee walls in. This will add more support to the roof so you can hammer well tomorrow. The knee wall will be visible from the interior but also the exterior of the dollhouse. I painted mines on one side the same color as my dollhouse walls and stained the interior.
The instructions say to fit it at a slight angle but I like the way it looks better straight than angled. You can do it anyway you want. It's all a matter of preference since this is not a structural component.
Glue sticks help press it to the side panel. Just make sure you put the pressure on the top part and on the bottom so it doesn’t lay flat against it. I taped a paint bottle on the outside of the roof panel just to give it a little added pressure towards the knee wall.
Check your roof on the interior and exterior to make sure all joints are tightly together and no clamps have come undone. Also check for any dripping glue. Let it all dry overnight.
