I went through the booklet that comes with it and ticked off all the pieces first to ensure they were all there then came the long, and laborious, step of sealing it. Like a lot of modern kits these days the Magpies kit is made from MDF, medium density fibreboard, and it's very porous. If, like me, you live in an old flat roofed house that suffers from humidity and damp then sealing it is something you really need to do. In fact you should really seal any MDF house you get to make it doesn't warp or go 'fluffy' with age and use.
I used MDF sealer from Wilko, it's about £4 a tin, and it goes a long way. I sealed every single piece of the house in the box, stairs, walls, roof, you name and I sealed it. Once it was all bone dry I started to put it together. In the kit there is superglue and PVA included. The PVA is meant for joining the main house parts together and I used it liberally wiping away the excess with my fingers and the corner of a bit of card so it didn't get everywhere. My lovely Hobster bought me some corner clamps and I can't thank him enough. They were incredibly helpful and I'd recommend anyone building a house get some.
It took me about 3 days in total to build the frame. It seems like a long time but that does include drying times. At each stage I let everything dry totally so that all the joins we're held tightly in place and I had a solid base to work with. What you may not realise from the above picture is the glaring mistake I made. A mistake that took me close to 6 hours work to fix. That's another blog post though!
