Okay, the directions say to paint everything before you glue together....well at this point I really didn't know how I was going to paint it because all I had was a zillon pieces of dollhouse. So I decided to glue the bottom floor and the porch floor and the front of the house and the 2 sides of the house together. I could still get to everything to paint it without a problem. So I glued all this together and to make sure it was square and to make sure the other floors would fit, I put the second and third floor in but DID NOT glue them at this point. Then we took masking tape and ran it tight around the outside of the house to put pressure where we had glued it. The directions told us to do it this way. The directions also said to weigh the floors down while the glue dried. So I had a couple gallons of water that I used as weights. I sat 2 gallons on the floor that I had glued and I sat one gallon on the outside of each side wall just to put a little more pressure on it. Then we left it alone to dry overnight.
The next day, we took the masking tape off and slide the second and third floors out that we did not glue and everything looked good. The second and third floors would slide in and out easy so we knew everything was square.
Now at this point I could visualize how I wanted the house to be and this is when I decided how to paint it. It looked more like a house at this point. I called my best friend and partner in crime, Denise and asked her if she would help me paint the house. She said sure! So she came over, (she lives next door--we are so lucky to live beside each other-- we've told both our husbands that if we ever move, we ALL have to move and find 2 houses side by side!! Needless to say, nobody is moving, we all love it, where we are at!)
So now that Denise is here, I started painting the inside of the house. Denise painted the outside. She had the bigger brush and finished faster than me. Once she finished with the bigger brush (a 2 inch brush) she gave it to me. That lasted about 5 minutes. I was just painting waaaaayyyyy to slow for Denise! She took it away from me and finished the inside in about 5 minutes! I gladly stepped aside. Thank you Denise. I should have taken a picture of us painting the house, but both of us were in our "comfy clothes" and our hair was a mess, no make-up and neither one of us wanted those pictures posted anywhere!!!!!
I figured if I painted the inside of the house all white, then the dollhouse wouldn't be so delicate. Since my 7 year old granddaughter will be the owner, she will be playing with the house. So she will be decorating it the way she wants to. So I thought painted walls would be better if she wanted to hang pictures or posters on and change her mind and hang other things on the way, painted walls would be more forgiving than wallpapered walls. Also if she wants a different color on the walls, we can paint over the white. Abbigail, my granddaughter was just talking earlier about her Mommy wouldn't let her hang a poster on her wall in her room b/c it would mess up the wall. So I want to fix her dollhouse so if she wants to hang a poster up, she can! I'm really anxious to see how she will decorate this house!
When I painted the inside of the house, I did notice that glue had oozed on the inside corners out onto the wall. I first just painted over it, hopping that would hide it. Well after the paint dried...it was bugging me, so I knew I had better fix it now while I could get to it easy. So I sanded the glue off. It came off a lot easier than I thought it would. Then I painted over the inside corners again. 100% better!! I was sooooo glad I did that. Okay, now leave it alone and let the paint dry.
I''ll be back after the paint dries!!!!
Gail
