Roomboxes Dolls House

In my previous post I wrote that the new house I am working on will consist of a series of roomboxes which will eventually form one big house.  Some of you have asked me to explain this approach a bit further, so.....

I think I should start with the first big dolls house I ever saw, the 17th century cabinet house which belonged to Petronella de la Court.  My photo below is not very good with all the reflecting light, so please visit the Centraal Museum website for more photos.

This dolls house basically is a cabinet with roomboxes inserted into it.  The individual roomboxes make building, moving, cleaning etc. a lot easier.

When I started planning my second dolls house, I decided I wanted it to be a series of roomboxes which together would form one big house.  But instead of building the outside first and then inserting the roomboxes into it, I will be doing it the other way around.

I will first build the roomboxes and when they're all finished I will build a wooden carcass around it.  It will not be a cabinet like the 17th century one, but I will finish the outside to look like a brick canal house.

I started by designing the house on graph paper and making a simple cardboard mockup of the house.  This way I could judge the scale of it.  The design I have now is slightly different from the mockup.  

The photo above shows the ground floor.  If you look closely at this photo you can see all the rooms are individual boxes (except for the courtyard and hall, they still need side walls).  The kitchen has walls which come in a bit and will eventually have doors in them.   

So in answer to one of your questions, yes my roomboxes will have doors going from one room to another (see the two rooms below).  As the walls are double thickness (there's a wall to each roombox),  you have to decide which roombox to attach the door to, plus you have to make the door surround deeper as you don't want any gaps showing.  

All the room boxes have their own floors and ceilings so they really are individual units.  The wiring for lights can just be taken to the back or side of the box.  As the boxes will be placed against each other, the wiring will be hidden from view between the walls or at the back, but still accessible when necessary. 

Here you can see the ground floor and first floor stacked on top of each other.  When all of the boxes are finished, I will make a facade from one piece of wood to fit the entire height of the building.  

The facades (both front and back) will be covered in brickwork.  Of course I will cut out holes where the windows are ;-)  The thickness of the wood will help suggest the thickness of the brick, so that the wooden windows are slightly set back into the brickwork.  The front edges of the roomboxes will get a nice finish on them as well.

So that's it really, just a cabinet with shelves which will hold several boxes.  You can make the design as easy (just square boxes) or as complicated as you like.  With doors, windows, stairs, or without.  Looking like a cabinet or looking like a house.  With an open front (like mine will be) or closed.

I hope this makes my approach a little bit clearer.  I can't show you more as I haven't built it yet ;-)))