Dream House - Project Reflection (posted on eBoard.com)

I love crafts and building things so I thought I'd enjoy the model part, but I actually enjoyed the drawing part even more. I use the PaintShop Pro program a lot to enhance photos for the web and to reduce size (of the picture and the file size) but I don't use the drawing aspects of it a lot. It was really fun to play around with and I can see that kids could really get involved in it. I used some textures to try to fill in floor areas in different rooms. I was really limited by colors and patterns in the program so that made it very difficult. I had used a real house plan program a few years ago to design my kitchen remodel and it had current colors of cabinets and countertops and flooring so it was much easier to work with. It was fun to play around with though. And as with anything on the computer, if I wanted to change something, I'd just move it and then make the walls bigger to connect.

I used cardboard to build the model and a glue gun to hold it together. It would have to be for older kids - I almost burned myself a few times, but the beauty of a glue gun is the glue dries fast so you can put it together easily. You had to think ahead how you were going to put it together so you weren't trying to get the glue gun into a tiny space where it wouldn't fit. It took a long time to cut out all the pieces and get the doors and windows measured and cut, but assembling it did not take a long time. Having the 3-D model really lets you visualize the house - if I ever build a house I think I'll definitely build models until I totally like what I see.

And I love to see the materials that everyone else has come up with to build models from - age appropriate.

Link to House Design Project Description and Photos

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