Designing Casa California

DESIGNING

Hello Everyone! Ive been making some huge technical progress on Casa California! Since I first started planning this house so many years ago, I always wondered how I would make it. I knew I wanted the walls to be at least 3/4 inch thick and I wanted arches and ironwork throughout the house, but I always wondered how I would achieve all of this.  After hours of research and sourcing, I realized the answer was clear.... LASERS!  Ive seen many dollhouses and dollhouse details all done with laser cutters, so I knew with this technique I would be able to get the best results.  Luckily, graphic design is one of my day jobs, so creating the necessary files would'nt be that difficult.

I began planning the layout of each individual wall and decided I wanted the walls to be 3 layers of 1/4 inch MDF. (Mainly because 1/4 inch is the maximum depth the laser cutters can cut at the place I sourced)  I also knew that having layered walls would give me the opportunity to run wiring throughout the walls as well. For the ironwork throughout the house, I wanted to use the same idea but since most laser cutters cannot cut brass, I decided to look into Photo Etching.  I also knew that with this technique, If I ever wanted to reproduce this house, It would be a piece of cake.

Surprisingly, planning out the walls and ironwork only took a few days. (I was expecting it to take way longer!) All in all, the house will be cut from approx 160 sq ft of 1/4 inch MDF and the ironwork will be cut out of 1.5mm brass sheeting.

THATS ALOT OF MDF!

THE PLANS

Made in Adobe Illustrator, Here you can see all 20 [2ftx4ft] sheets of 1/4 inch MDF with the puzzle that is this house laid out. Each assembled wall will interlock with the floors and walls next to it to create one solid, incredibly heavy structure. 

IRONWORK

In the image above, you can see all the ironwork for the house including the arched stained glass windows for the living room. (Colored pink for reference) Aside from having intricate ironwork throughout the house, I wanted the living room window to have and old Spanish leaded glass look. The idea came from a beautiful Spanish Colonial home that was a few doors down from me growing up. To personalize the house even more, I added my family crest to the center of the stained glass.  This will all be photo etched onto brass sheeting, then painted black and aged. 

A moc-up of the finished window with my family crest. 

To achieve this, I plan on painting a sheet of plexiglass to simulate the glass and sandwich it in between two layers of the photo etched brass. 

I hope you all have a wonderful rest of the week and I thank you for following my adventure!

xx

Chris