May 2015: I started the Westville as part of a Greenleaf community build in 2005, and at the time we blogged our progress on the Greenleaf forum. After a few site upgrades the old community blog has become hard to link to and I’m redoing my website anyway, so I decided to move those posts over here and backdate them. Sorry for any weirdness that results!

I’m too sleepy to load up pictures right now, but I’m happy to report that I got through all of Step A tonight. Which means, essentially, that I have a house! Instant gratification.

First, I enlarged the kitchen window hole to make it wide enough for the casement window I bought, and filled in the gaps at the top and bottom. (The original hole is a vertical rectangle, and the casement window is horizontal.) I also enlarged the stair hole for the Houseworks stairs I’m going to use (just took a little bit of sanding) and chopped the bit of railing that protrudes into the kitchen off the center partition wall. Then I went through Step A, following the directions (rare for me!) and used a combination of wood glue and white glue to glue the pieces on. The shell is drying right now.

As I was going through Step A, I applied a piece of tapewire across the first floor and up the right wall. I don’t know yet where I’m going to put lights, but this gives me some flexibility. I did this before putting in the second floor because once that’s in, it’s harder to get the wire from the first floor to the second floor.

Step B is building the staircase, which I’m going to skip because I’m using pre-fab stairs. I went to the dollhouse shop this weekend but they didn’t have the set I want, so I am going to have to order them. I have a 20% coupon for HBS for the beginning of August, so I’m going to order the stairs then, along with the disappearing attic stairs and the closet door. That means I can move right to Step C, which involves putting together the rest of the shell.