Very very very fine house

[jere7my]

Over a cup of mocha the other day, I sketched the plan of my protagonist's house, based loosely on Figure 22 of John Ward's Roman Era in Britain. He grew up there, and lives there still with his wife and father; the shape of the house, I reasoned, would shape the man. But a moderately crappy pencil sketch didn't help much. I decided I had too many spare hours cluttering up my life, so I downloaded Google Sketchup in order to create a 3D version. Which, over the course of a wince-worthy amount of time, I did:

I would not classify it as "time well spent", but, apart from learning to use Sketchup, I did find that it clarified a lot of things about my protagonist. I know there's a nook under the stairs where he might have fooled around with a girl or two. I know the spire on the dome casts a shadow on the rooftop outside his father's (now his) bedroom window every morning, and watching that natural sundial might have influenced his decision to become a clockmaker. I know which door he will leave by to make his midnight rendezvous, and what he will stare at while waiting for the hour to arrive.

adfamiliares makes fun of me, asking if I've designed the carpets yet. (That's a Tolkien jab. There are worse jabs.) But it was a worthwhile project—or would have been, at about 1/4 the time investment. Getting a chance to walk through Scrutiny's house as he would filled my head with images; I am brimfull of details.

Now I must purge the demon from my hard drive, before I start modeling my entire neighborhood.

I've stripped away the roof here so you can see a bit of the interior.

If you're curious, there are a few more views on Flickr. (If you want the Sketchup file for yourself, though I can't imagine why you would, feel free to email me.)

Comments

[uncleamos]

Neat!

[glynhogen.livejournal.com]

Mmm...hardwood...although I must confess, since reading Pride and Prejudice I can no longer delight quite so much in real estate related discussions.

Very nice. And look at it this way. You invested a lot of time on the front end, but now you know where everything is. That means you won't need to keep a running list (bedroom third on right, bathroom on left), nor will you need to go back through your draft with a fine-toothed comb, searching for architectural inconsistencies. It may very well be a net gain.

[uncleamos]

Wait, what's the problem with P&P?

[glynhogen.livejournal.com]

There's nothing wrong with Pride and Prejudice. But now every time I start to talk about some aspect of my house, little warning bells go off and I wonder if I'm starting to sound like Mr. Collins.

[uncleamos]

Heh.

[genarti]

Ooh, very nice!

And now you'll have that to refer back to, which should save you time and a lot of headaches later, as glynhogen up there says.

[metasilk.livejournal.com]

Oh lord, I so want to have time to play with this program.