Step 1 - deciding what to do

What sort of house am I making?
I've decided to make an English Victorian style house as my first attempt at making a house, akin to the many terraced houses that can be found across most of the UK. This style was chosen for a few reasons:
- being as much as a novice as I am I'm taking the easier option and creating a house without stairs to start with. Stairs seem to be, from what I've read, the hardest part of building a house. The house I'm making will be four floors with some artistic licence with the omitting of a stair case
- if I decide later on to make another Victorian house, I will have the option of joining the two together and making one large house with a stairwell in the middle
- there is tons of information online about Victorian architecture, decorating and furniture that I am using to help
- I have some quite comprehensive plans for a Victorian house in one of my books on Doll's House making
- when we were in the UK Nigel and I visited the Charles Dickens Museum in London where Dicken's lived from 1837 to 1839. Seemingly dull from the front, this house is very charming inside.

So basically I'm making a Victorian style house with the interior based very loosely on one of Mr Dickens' places of residence (albeit brief), and the exterior based on houses such as this one.

Why a Victorian house?
I really admire the variations that can be found in Victorian houses, while they still retain features that make them iconically Victorian.

I'm not one for lavish colours or fabrics, and rooms filled with ornaments and decorations that characterised many of the houses belonging to the Victorian middle and upper class. However I am drawn to the challenge and detail that this invites in relation to creating and decorating a doll's house. Of course there are many beautifully decorated Victorian houses that exist today (ones with the interior retained as it was in the time of Queen Victoria's reign) and my intent is to capture a tasteful yet accurate representation of the houses of this time, in a miniature scale.

Next post: making the house (not decorating though)...