I designed this replica of a private residence on commission. Although the client only paid me for digital deliverables—i.e., design services and instructions, but no physical bricks—I couldn’t resist splurging a little on parts to recreate my finished product in real life, with a few modifications of my own to “spruce up” the build. Yes, that was a pun, because yes, the addition of a towering redwood tree in the backyard was one of my biggest add-ons!
This 360-degree home recreation also features fully realized, furnished interior spaces, making it perhaps the most in-depth structural recreation I have ever completed at this size. Keeping balance between external and internal was a fun puzzle to solve, and while I was battling for space much of the time, I’m pleased with and proud of the final result.
Read on to learn more about the design choices behind this build, and to check out all the rooms of the house!
External Aspects
Before we go for the inside tour, though, let’s have a look some of the details on the outside of this model.
Like I mentioned, this tree was the biggest & most visible change I made to the clients’ original home. I decided to include it here because I really had nowhere else to showcase it!
I built this tree independently, based on a technique innovated by one of my students, where 4 1x2 brackets in a square leaves a 1-bar-thick central cavity. The redwood is essentially made from stacked bracket rings, each angled differently to lend the tree an organic look, slid like beads down long rigid hoses. These hoses gave me height, but not strength; in reality, the tree is quite wobbly.
One of the most finicky areas to get right was the front face of the home. I had a lot of components I had to include here. In a pretty small chunk of real estate (another pun…) I had to fit shutters around the big windows, lined windows on the sides of the door, and SNOT-clad pillars.
Due to all the work and rework this part took, though, it’s also one of my favorite areas of the model. This was definitely the most complex wall to solve, since most of the others are pretty flat.
Roofing was probably the biggest headache I encountered while designing this model. The big question I faced was: do I build a traditional slope-built roof (like this), or something made out of plates, wedge plates and tiles (like this)?
The slope-built roof had the virtue of stability & total coverage, while the plate-built roof let me build the nestled gable ends more accurately.
In the end, I opted to not settle for either roof type, and instead chose to combine the best aspects of both! The majority of the roof is slope-built, while the gable edges and garage dormer are plate-built.
Here’s a better look at that dormer, another tricky area to get right but one I’m proud of. This is also the only window of the house that doesn’t open up onto an actual interior space.
Texturing the garage door was a joy… I thought of this effect right away when I saw the door I’d have to replicate. Initially, I used 1x1 plates in a similar inversion, but the 1x2s let me nail the actual pattern and proportions a little bit better.
Like the front door, the garage door is 5 studs tall. It was a hard number to work with vertically, and despite my best attempts to integrate it, there are still some annoying gaps that resulted in the corners.
The backyard, with its deck and barbecue, is an oasis of calm, its relaxing qualities only accentuated by some of my added touches like the redwood and a bed of pink flowers.
The glass door back here makes use of tile wedging, a technique I first implemented in my Chateau de Chenonceau model, seen there in the cruciform window treatments.
In back, there’s a soil patch with some spiky bushes & an AC unit. One of the most exciting aspects of this build was working in a scale somewhere between traditional minifigure scale & trophy fig scale. Finding a way to nail recognizable objects, like the AC unit and furniture, at this scale was super fun!
Speaking of recognizable objects, here are the compost and recycling bins. These two were the last additions to my original design, and serve for me as a pop of color and liveliness to what’s otherwise a pretty monochromatic, sterile build from first glance.
Interior Design
The biggest difference between this architectural home replica and others I’ve done in the past is the inclusion of interior spaces. Though I had to fudge proportions in a few areas to squeeze everything in, the floor plan and furnishings inside the house were designed to be as accurate as possible.
On the ground floor, we have the:
Garage
Kitchen/sitting room
Living room
Office
1/2 bathroom
Laundry room
In the garage is a home gym, complete with weights racked on the wall and a lifting frame. The rubber tiles add a splash of color to this room, as do the yellow industrial shelves over to one side. These sit next to some HVAC equipment, which lines up with the AC unit outside.
It’s hard to see due to its small size, but between the garage and the rest of the home is a laundry room, outfitted with a washer/dryer combo.
The spacious living room features a luxurious L couch, a flat screen TV & credenza, and some lamps. The fireplace on the real home is gas, but I’ve added a chimney to my version to break up some of the flat lines of the roof.
The staircase was one of my favorite aspects of the lower floor to design, with its 1/2 stud steps. This sub-structure links up perfectly with the floor above, even carrying the grey carpet from the upper floor downstairs.
The kitchen is full of cabinetry, counter space, and appliances. There’s a small island, a fridge/freezer, and even an oven and microwave within all this relatively small portion of the house.
In laying the “hardwood floors,” I preserved the dominant grain pattern and lay of the real floors by putting down long tiles that all face the same direction.
Off to the side of the kitchen is a quaint sitting area, with some comfy couches and a chaise lounge. A little area rug helps to define the space, as does a low coffee table.
You can tell from this room that the home’s owners are animal lovers, since an aquarium and a dog bed help populate this space. Unfortunately, I had no room to add in the real-life birdcage!
On the second floor, we have the:
Hallway
Master bedroom
Master bathroom & closet
Bathroom
Closet
LEGO room
2 additional bedrooms
Here’s a better look at the hallway, and how it marries with the staircase as I referenced earlier. 6(!) doorways lead off from this space, allowing access to the other rooms on the floor.
For internal doorways on this model, I opted to use a 3-brick-tall window and opaque windowpane. If that windowpane piece existed in white, I would’ve used white; sadly, grey was the only viable color. Still, I preferred the sense of depth the window/pane added compared to my alternative of regular white bricks.
Luckily, my client instructed me to include a LEGO studio room in the house, so I didn’t have to add one of my own accord! Here are some of the sets I attempted to emulate in micro-micro scale:
The Death Star, actually out in the hallway
The Fiat 500
Yoda sculpture
Modular buildings (Cafe corner, Downtown Diner, Fire Brigade, Market Street, Corner Garage, Bookshop)
The master suite was an especially tricky interior area due to the number of doors here. I had to compromise a little just to fit them all; technically, the door from the master bedroom to the hallway is half blocked by the thickness of the wall!
The queen-size bed is one of my favorite micro-models of the home. Those pillows look so soft!
The roof comes off it two pieces: one above the garage and one above the bulk of the house. Aside from the chimney, I also put a little satellite dish up there to make the dominantly grey, slope-covered area have another spot of visual interest.
Thanks for reading! If you have any other questions or thoughts about this model, feel free to leave them in the comments below.