Gary,
The house (as drawn on the original plans) is 800mm x 600mm - but then we added two extensions, a kitchen (300mm x 400mm) and what is called the Garden Room (400mm x 500mm). The total length is now 1500mm and the whole building is mounted on a piece of 18mm MDF which is 1700mm x 700mm. It takes two to lift it and something we hadn't considered was where it was going to live!
The first picture shows the dining room on the bottom floor of the house.
I actually built the whole house "dry" and then took it apart to rout the channels for the wiring, and then my wife started to do the decorating. Whilst I was making the house, she was busy making cupboards, beds and all sorts of other bits and pieces. We made as much as we could but certain things are beyond us. A high quality 3D printer would be useful for making baths and sinks but we stopped short of buying that.
The MDF walls have lugs on them which slot into the MDF floor and ceiling (or tenons fitting into mortices).
The bookcase and log burner are in place as they both have lights inside them.
The flooring that you see is bought in sheets with a sticky backing. You then stain and polish to get your desired finish.
The skirting board was bought eventually. I planned to make my own but was staggered at the total length needed. I also found that the Dremel router bits didn't give a very good finish.
You're right about routing, there is a lot to do though much of my cutting was done on my bandsaw.
The house is unusual in that it is two rooms deep - most are just a single room deep. It means that we you can access the house from the front & the rear and my wife has twice as many rooms to furnish. This picture shows the utility room which is behind the dining room.
Once the ground floor rooms were completed the ceiling / floor is routed out, glued in place and the wiring is brought up through and fed to the LIB controller.
I bought the LIB controller from a guy at the Miniatura show at the NEC. It has 20 channels, allowing something like 160 lights or sockets. I decided to use one channel per room / area and quickly realised that I needed a second LIB as there were too many cables running to one corner of the house. The net is that every lamp and socket in the house can be switched on or off independently and it is all done from a remote controller. In addition, any light can be made to flash or flicker - the fire and the two log burners have flickering red lights.
Here we've "completed" the structure of the house, with just the top floor to be decorated. Access to the two bedrooms on the top floor is via a large slice of roof that is removable.
When I said the structure was finished, there are still months of work ahead - the roof has over 7000 tiles which are stuck on individually. They are made of stiff card and spray painted (by another guy that we met at Miniatura). The flashing round the chimney is real lead.
Here is the finished article showing the kitchen extension on the left and a glimpse of the Garden Room on the right
The kitchen work has started! Later we added a full island unit with oak top.
Every drawer and door opens and there are even lights in the range cooker.
The final room was the Garden Room which started life as a Ski Chalet kit with two floors - a Christmas present back in 2018. It didn't look right until the floor was taken out and real oak beams and a wood burner were added.
The whole building from start to finish took the two of us a fairly intense 7 months, but like all houses, real and 1/12 scale, they are never really finished - there is always something more to be done!
The house as it is tonight
I hope this has given you some ideas and remember that, like most projects, it never goes quite to plan. It took 3 attempts to get the roof structure right for the removable part to slide in and out smoothly!
David
