In my last post, I had finished attaching the bottom porch floor to my dollhouse, and today I’ll pick up from there and show you how I worked my way from the porch to the roof. To start, I needed to glue the second-story porch floor in place, which required laying the house on its back and using pieces of wood to maintain the floor’s position as the glue dried.
While the glue was drying, I took all of the roof pieces that will be shingled in a later step, and I added the shingle guidelines in pencil according to the measurements given in the instructions.
Later that day, when the porch had completely dried, I set about gluing the banisters and porch posts in place.
The next task involved painting and gluing trimstrips to the edges of the top floor, and it is against these pieces that I will be placing the bottom of the roof side panels in a later step. I taped the trimstrips in place until the glue dried.
When the trimstrips were completely dry, I was ready to start on the roof, and I nearly made the same mistake that I made with some of the interior walls, in that I almost forgot to paint them before installation, which would have left me with the pain-in-the-butt task of painting the walls, including all of the hard-to-reach nooks in the corners, after the walls were glued together. Luckily, I remembered this time and I painted the interior of all of the roof panels white first. If you are painting your walls and ceilings instead of wallpapering, I strongly recommend that you save yourself the hassle and paint the walls before assembling!
After the paint dried, it was time to glue and tape the roof walls in place, and I used heavy objects to keep them propped up as I taped.
At this point, I took a craft store break, and I bought another bottle of Martha Stewart craft paint, this time in the Greek Tile color, which I used to paint the gingerbread trim for the porch before gluing it in place.
I finished the day’s building by adding the attic divider wall and the roof, which was weighted down and taped as the glue dried.
Over the weekend, I hope to have a great deal of the exterior trim and other details finished, as well as the massive project of shingling the roof, so be sure to join me back here on the blog to see more pictures!
