Where to Put It All.

Someone on one of the forums asked about where we display our houses and other minis. It made me think about mine. We live in a pretty small house. I manage to incorporate minis in almost every room. I try not to let them get in the way of real life. They blend in.

I am very lucky. When we moved into this house we got a humongous TV. My husband is a fan of big screens. As a result, I got the former entertainment center/bookcase for another use. It got set up in the family room and it ultimately got taken over by minis. Soon there will be no books left.

The castle that you see on top is about 2 1/2 feet long. One of these days I am going to climb up there and take photos. I had some but I can't find them. I think that they disappeared when we switched computers.

Anyway, I figure that sooner or later this whole thing will be for minis. You see, it is almost 2 feet deep because of the TV that used to sit smack dab in the center where the Southwestern room box now resides.

The point of this is dollhouses and room boxes don't have to sit on a table or a special stand. Any of the older entertainment centers are great for this. They are always deeper than a regular bookcase and will hold a LOT of weight because they were built to hold the old weighty TVs.

Here's a case of what not to do. The Mystery House sits on a table in the corner of the same room. It is only there because I am working on it. When I finish it will find a home elsewhere. That corner is about 5x5 feet and that is about all that will fit in there. It's not at all practical.

As you can see, I also hang a lot of things on the wall. When you have limited space and a lot of minis you have to get creative. If there is an open space on top of a book shelf or other piece of furniture, I have it covered.

When I finish the Buttercup Bookshop I am going to have to start looking for space again. We have "plant shelves" in the bedrooms, kitchen and bathroom. They are what would be dead space above closets and cabinets. I have my eye on those. There will be a lot of rearranging and cleaning out to free them up. I have a confession. When we looked at houses I leaned towards the ones with "plant shelves". I didn't mention that I had them in mind as a place for minis at the time, but I did. I am thinking that the one in the kitchen would be cool for a street of shops.

While I am here I will show you the mock up for the stairway in the bookshop. It is pretty crude. That's the way I work tho. I need to see it in 3-D to see if it's going to work. It IS going to work. YAY ME!!!

I simply cut it out of scraps of foam core. I couldn't find my pins so I just taped it. Now I have to cut a hole in the floor of the second story. It is going to work. I know because I have done it before. The footprint will be 4" square taken out of the corner. I am going to have to close in the front window. Other than that no structural changes.

OK. I am going back to playing with foam core and tape.

See you tomorrow.