Welcome to my bathroom
Doesn’t everyone share their bathroom with the world? Well, I thought I would. And yes, there is method to my madness. And yes, it does have something to do with miniatures. It also has something to do with full-size woodworking. And it has something to do with my new-found love affair with SketchUp.
I’m in the process of remodeling a small bathroom in an old house – our house. The next stop on the clumsy handyman trail is to build a medicine cabinet and an accessory shelf that will hang over the the sink area. So, I thought, what better way to get a feel for the space available than to draw the wall to scale, stick a sink next to it, and then start drawing cabinet-size shapes.
I’m learning, or trying to learn, SketchUp and so my goal was to do exactly that. I thought that sufficient challenge. I assumed I could download a sink from Google’s 3D Warehouse and how hard could it be to draw a wall anyway? One thing led to another and all too easily I ended up with this bathroom, that both daughter and wife recognized as being ours.
I admit that towel racks, electrical outlets and toilet paper rolls won’t help me design my cabinet but aren’t they cool? Besides, I had fun taking a towel from one towel rack and fitting it to the one I used. Sometimes I’m easily amused.
The thing is, this was soooooo easy that I just couldn’t stop with just a wall and a sink. All of the fixtures were downloaded and with very slight modifications plunked into the scene without working up a sweat. I drew the baseboard moldings and window moldings using SketchUp’s magical ‘follow me’ tool and that was downright fun. Oh, and you can see through the window – see? I’ve got to get some blinds installed.
So, what does this have to do with miniatures? Well, sometime ago I speculated that SketchUp might be a great planning tool for those wanting to build roomboxes or dollhouses. While you may not want to do a bathroom, I think this provides ample evidence that this is a tool worth considering. The key is the 3D Warehouse that is quickly becoming a repository for every piece of “stuff” being sold for exterior and interior use around buildings as the companies who make the stuff are putting their entire catalogs online as SketchUp models.
Cheers — Larry
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