Miniature Goals
Breaking a huge task down into smaller managable tasks is the way to achieve something that seems impossible. My biggest frustration is that I do not own my own house. I have seen some innovative ways of getting around this. The most creative I have seen was the guy who aimed to turn a paper clip into a house. Amazingly enough last time I heard he had made it to a car, which is impressive given that he started from nothing.
My mission is to build my house - starting small. Inspired by a shower one morning, I decided that I would start with miniature houses, sell them and progressively build larger and larger until I am able to fund building our full size house. I have had no formal woodworking experience - when I went to Intermediate females were not allowed to do woodwork or metalwork. I did do tech drawing in third and fourth form, and I am looking forward to the challenge.
I have a problem with visualisation - in that I am a kinestetic person - I find it easier to see in my mind if I can touch / feel the item I am trying to realise. Having a real house to base my visualisation on will help me make our house a reality.
This week I had a weeks leave so I did some research into materials, plans, etc. It has been a fun exercise trying to work out what I will build the house out of. My friend recommended cardboard, however I didnt think it would be robust enough. I decided on MDF. However I found a really cool website http://homepages.slingshot.co.nz/~gasayers/doll/ which inspired me immensely. He used a cardboard house as the initial mockup, so I thought it would be logical to not waste wood when I got to that stage, and decided that it would be wise to start with cardboard.
On Thursday I purchased some essential items for building our cardboard house.
Friday I downloaded and printed some plans http://www.thewoodcrafter.net/proj/p40.php. The Victorian dollshouse was fantastic for ideas on how to put together the finer details for the house.
I used a floorplan from a house we were going to get built a few years back.
Here is the photo of getting started
The hard part was working out what scale to use for the house. I started with the numbers on the floorplan - for a 3x3 room I made it 3 inches by 3 inches. However the difficulty was that every room did not have dimensions on it. With a bit of tweaking I settled on measuring the inside walls length in centimetres and then transposing it to inches - 3.6cm became 3 inches plus 6 marks past 3 inches. It seemed to work well.
The hardest part was cutting, and getting used to driving the cutting tool. It was a little rough to begin with, but as the day progressed I progressively got more used to how to best get the straightest, nicest cut.
Here are a couple of photos of the progress from day one...
My mission is to build my house - starting small. Inspired by a shower one morning, I decided that I would start with miniature houses, sell them and progressively build larger and larger until I am able to fund building our full size house. I have had no formal woodworking experience - when I went to Intermediate females were not allowed to do woodwork or metalwork. I did do tech drawing in third and fourth form, and I am looking forward to the challenge.
I have a problem with visualisation - in that I am a kinestetic person - I find it easier to see in my mind if I can touch / feel the item I am trying to realise. Having a real house to base my visualisation on will help me make our house a reality.
This week I had a weeks leave so I did some research into materials, plans, etc. It has been a fun exercise trying to work out what I will build the house out of. My friend recommended cardboard, however I didnt think it would be robust enough. I decided on MDF. However I found a really cool website http://homepages.slingshot.co.nz/~gasayers/doll/ which inspired me immensely. He used a cardboard house as the initial mockup, so I thought it would be logical to not waste wood when I got to that stage, and decided that it would be wise to start with cardboard.
On Thursday I purchased some essential items for building our cardboard house.
- 3 x A3 sheets of heavy weight card
- An Electric Glue Gun with glue sticks
- Craft PVA Glue
- Clear Cellotape
- A metal ruler
- A craft knife
- A craft cutting board
- Pencils
- An eraser
Friday I downloaded and printed some plans http://www.thewoodcrafter.net/proj/p40.php. The Victorian dollshouse was fantastic for ideas on how to put together the finer details for the house.
I used a floorplan from a house we were going to get built a few years back.
Here is the photo of getting started
The hard part was working out what scale to use for the house. I started with the numbers on the floorplan - for a 3x3 room I made it 3 inches by 3 inches. However the difficulty was that every room did not have dimensions on it. With a bit of tweaking I settled on measuring the inside walls length in centimetres and then transposing it to inches - 3.6cm became 3 inches plus 6 marks past 3 inches. It seemed to work well.
The hardest part was cutting, and getting used to driving the cutting tool. It was a little rough to begin with, but as the day progressed I progressively got more used to how to best get the straightest, nicest cut.
Here are a couple of photos of the progress from day one...
posted by NetGirl at 7:30 PM
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