How to Create a Scale Model of Your Own House

Have you ever asked, “How do I build a scale model of my own house?“ This video shows you how to create your own model. I’ll show you the process I use to get awesome results. Since this house has so many details I wanted to capture, I decided to build my model in ¼“ or ’O scale’. O scale is the larger than HO scale used for model trains. As we made our measurements I took a lot of photographs for future reference in building my model. I transferred the measurements (and the location of the doors and windows) into an architectural software package called Chief Architect which I used to create a 3-D rendering. Chief Architect has a neat feature where you can print out PDFs to build paper models in whatever scale you’d like. I made PDFs in ¼“ scale on my laptop. I then imported the PDFs into CorelDRAW and outlined the walls, doors, windows, and roof sections. I created the windows based on their relative size along with the exact number of panes of glass for each window. Then I have the windows and walls laser cut from 1/16th of an inch basswood. The laser precision cuts the wood with the thickness of a human hair. It also allows me to etch certain details into the wood like bricks, rocks, the capitols, and the front door. One detail of this house I never noticed before were these nature shapes cut out of the shutters. I couldn’t possibly cut these with an X-Acto knife. I added the nature shapes to each shutter when had them laser cut. I cut the window openings out of the walls just slightly smaller than the diameter of the windows themselves. This allows a slight surface to glue the windows to - which I’ll show you in a minute. Once I have all the wood cut, I can begin to build the framework of the model. Keeping the walls straight and square can be challenging so I used small square pieces of thin plywood to keep the wall corners nice and square. The exterior walls consisted of wood siding and a dentil cornice. The cornice is made from seven strips of wood and incorporates a gutter. One strip consisted of tooth-cut squares to give me the dentil look I was hoping for. After the cornice and siding are added I was able to paint the entire house white. After separately painting the windows I added a thin piece of plastic on the inside of each window. Here’s where the smaller inside window opening comes in handy. With the slightly smaller interior window hole, I could simply, and accurately, slide in my doors and windows into the exterior siding for a perfect fit. The roof shingles were made from thin gray card stock. With a thin black Sharpie marker, I drew horizontal lines to give the illusion of gaps between the slate shingles. I then cut the paper into strips and glued them to the roof with a slight overlap. I laser cut and etched the capitals for the big columns on the side of the house as well as the smaller columns for the entryway. I used dowel rods for the columns and placed each of them in a small square with the ring at the bottom for a realistic look. The rest of this model build consisted of adding the terrace stairs, front entryway and the detailed railings, shutters and flower box as well as the chimney. As you can see, the chimney bricks and tiles were cut to match the real thing. Finally, I cut out an outline of this house and placed it inside some black foam board. The end result was this beautiful ¼“ scale classic revival style model house. Please like and share this video and feel free to add a question or comment below. Thanks for watching!