Country Lane Dollhouse Kit: Prepping & Sorting Your Pieces Before You Build

Before any glue comes out, there’s a prep stage that makes the rest of the Country Lane build go so much smoother. Here’s exactly how I organized everything before I started assembling.

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What You’ll Need at This Stage

• A Ryobi sander (for sanding after priming the walls, floors, and roof)
• Sandpaper sheets for the smaller trim pieces (a pinch method works well since the batten is so tiny)
• Kilz primer for priming the walls, floors, and roof before sanding
• Aleene’s Tacky Glue for assembly
• Masking tape (to hold pieces in place while glue sets, and to label parts)
• A Sharpie for labeling

Quick Tips

• Label as you go. Don’t trust yourself to remember which piece is which a week from now.
• Check every piece, big and small, against the parts list before you start gluing anything.
• Batch similar prep work together (like painting all your trim at once) even if the pieces will end up different colors. It’s a time-saver.

Start With the Big Pieces

I pulled out the largest pieces first, walls, floors, roof, and so on, and identified each one against the instructions. Once I knew what I was looking at, I labeled it with masking tape and a Sharpie. This one step saves a lot of second-guessing later, especially once you’re a few build sessions in and can’t remember which wall panel is which.

Handle the Small Pieces Carefully

For the smaller pieces, I kept everything in the original box rather than dumping it all out. I still checked each piece against the parts list, but keeping them contained meant nothing got lost or mixed up before I was ready to use it.

Group Your Trim for an Efficient Prep

Here’s a tip that saved me real time: I kept all of the trim together, windows, doors, shutters, gingerbread eaves, the door hood, and the flower boxes, and prepped and painted them all in one sitting. Even though these pieces ended up different final colors, prepping and priming them as one batch was far more efficient than doing it piece by piece later.

Prime and Sand Before You Build

Once everything was sorted and labeled, I primed the walls, floors, and roof with Kilz primer before moving on to anything else. That let me sand everything smooth once the primer had dried, using the Ryobi sander for the larger house body pieces and the sandpaper-and-pinch method for the tiny trim batten. Getting this done up front meant every piece was already primed and smooth by the time it was ready to dry-fit.

This is just the first step. Next up: dry-fitting before anything gets glued down for good. For the full picture of this build, check out my Country Lane Dollhouse Kit Review & Build Guide and the Country Lane FAQ.

Watch the full Country Lane Dollhouse Build

More Country Lane Resources

• Country Lane Dollhouse Kit FAQ
• How to Wire a Dollhouse for Electricity (Cir-Kit 101 Kit)
• Every Product & Tool I Used
• Prepping & Sorting Your Pieces Before You Build
• Dry-Fitting and Assembling the House Body
• Adding Trim & Batten to the Front Door
• Painting the Exterior, Trim & Details
• How to Shingle the Roof
• How to Stain Dollhouse Shingles After They’re Already on the Roof
• How to Remove a Glued Dollhouse Roof With a Hair Dryer (No Damage)
• Finishing the Chimney: Cobblestone, Faux Grout & Aging Technique
• Attaching Trim, Shutters, Flower Boxes & the Staircase