In order to be able to even lift up or move the house once the whole thing was assembled, I had to add a thicker wood so the house would not fall apart. I covered the whole house (side walls, back, roof and front panels) with 6 mm MDF and repainted it. If I hadn't done that, the house would have been good for garbage; the wood used to assemble the house was too thin and really not a quality wood. Now, I can at least lift it, move it from one place to another.

Looking at this house shows me how much I have improved in this hobby. It's not the most beautiful house I have, it's not perfect either, but I love it and it reminds me of mistakes I did in the beginning and also makes me realize that the more you get into this wonderful world of miniatures, the more you love it and of course ...... the better you become.

So here's my advice to beginners : don't get too desperate, as time goes on, things will go better

The furniture you see in this picture of the kitchen is not entirely from Del Prado. I added a few others things, like the chairs and the table (from a Mini Mundus Kit) and of course the little details you see all around. I would say that the quality of the wood used for the house and for the furniture isn't the best, but you can still try and do your best.

This shelf came with the weekly magazine, but all the furniture from those Del Prado Kits wasn't a very good quality. The wood was too thin and broke easily, I had to sand it a lot, especially after gluying the pieces together. The differents pieces did not really fit very well, but still, the result is not too bad once you give it a little imagination, color and fabric. I had a little blue/white fabric left over from a previous project and I used it here on this shelf, added a couple of nice handles to the drawers and suddenly, the whole thing looked much better. To make a cheap piece of furniture look good, it mostly just takes a little imagination.

All the furniture in this room came with the weekly issues of the magazine. As you can see for yourself, once they were put together, glued, painted and set in a room, they do look nice after all.

I added this picture especially to draw your attention to one mistake I made : look at the ceiling !!!!! The card board I used was far too heavy and probably I also used the wrong glue and one day the whole thing just fell of.

But a dollhouse is not different than a real house : from time to time, it needs a little makeover !

Even though this open dresser is not a rare and expensive pice of furniture, once I added my little pieces from my porcelaine collection, I was quite satisfied with the result.

The final touch by adding as much details as possible always makes your miniatures look "real", from a little piece of furniture to an entire house. The more attention you pay to detail, the more "real" your final project will look.

In this picture of the bedroom, you can see a mirror made with just a piece of cheap wood, a little mirror, a few tiny sea shells and a little white paint. Take a more detailed look at it in the Tips and Tricks/DIY section.

As for the double bet set, I tried to make it on my own with some fabric, but I must admit I really am no good at all when it comes to sewing.

This is the ceiling of the bedroom. The result was not as good as I expected it to be, since I got the idea from a book and I just wanted to try it.

But at was not a very difficult project to realize. I chose a picture from an Internet WebSite about great painters, copied it to my Photoshop, had it reduced to the right scale and printed it out on photo paper.

The rest is easy, you paint your ceiling the color of your choice, glue the picture, make a frame around it and you're done.

The tub and toilet are made of plastic, but the sink is from Bodo Hennig and it's porcelaine. (It's the same one Stuart Little had in the movie). The flooring is made out of a sheet of marbled tiles. Those sheets look like real tiles, they are affordable and easy to handle, because you don't need to cut them or glue them one by one, but yo can just use the entire sheet for one room.

This room was supposed to look more "chinese", unfortunately I had a lot of trouble finding the appropriate furniture and/or accessories. When I started with the room, I painted it. But in the end, I didn't like the color and just used colored card paper in this red/orange color, glued it to the walls, added the chinese paintings on black cardboard, made the frames around and glued them to the walls. As I said, the furniture is not chinese, but I guess, one day I will probably change the whole room into something else or, if I'm lucky, find some chinese stuff to fill it with.

If any of you have an idea where I could find chinese miniatures in 1/12 scale, please drop me a few lines.

Speaking about details : the upper floors have a little hall, like all the other floors in this house, but there is just very little space available, but still, you can make it look like if someone's is really living in this house, just by adding a few details.

What you need to do is try to imagine what you would do with the available space if it were a real house. From there on, the only limit is your imagination.