I am building a 1/12 scale model of a typical New York City Brownstone.
This all started by accident. When my niece was a little girl she saved up her money and bought a dollhouse kit which we assembled together. For many years it has been languishing in my sister's attic. When she threatened to throw it out, I volunteered to fix it up for my niece's children.
Being ridiculously detail oriented, I was annoyed to find that the room layout made no sense and that the rooms were all too small for a house that size. I looked at lots of other dollhouses online and discovered that this was the case for most of the commercial kits. It seemed strange that the meticulous exteriors of grand mansions had interiors with dining rooms that barely fit a table for 4 and bathrooms in the stairwell.
So I started thinking about what type of house would allow easy access to all the rooms, yet be architecturally accurate. I live in a typical New York City brownstone, built in 1893. The layout is a simple rectangle and I realized that with one side wall removed it would be ideal as a dollhouse. I took great pleasure in just thinking about how to build it. When the concept got to complex to keep in my head I began to draw it out. When I couldn't visualize how the stairs would be constructed to connect the floors I realized that flat drawings wouldn't do and I'd need to go 3 dimensional.
Next thing i know I'm lugging sheets of plywood up 4 flights of stairs and converting my living room into a construction site.
This project has turned into a behemoth and, as my sister says, I have definitely gone down the rabbit hole.