Project Doll's House: Roof Mechanism

Wouldn't it be fun to have a roof that opens and closes? — Because the roof panel is slightly wider than the house (822 mm) and, assuming a 45° slope, 295 mm wide, it will be somewhat heavy and will require sturdy hinges in order to survive frequent opening and closing. Since the roof material is thin (9 mm), one cannot easily use screws to attach hinges. One could use bolts, but these would show on the outside and look ugly. Therefore I designed an opening mechanism, which is based upon nothing but the shape of the walls and roof. Here's the plan (click for larger version).

The roof is sloped by 45°, i.e. for a 360 mm wide house, the roof will be 180 mm high in the middle. The roof elements need to be a little larger on both sides (here 20 mm on either side), and also "hang over" the edge to front and rear, i.e. 20 mm wider.

The side wall needs to have a square-shaped bit on the top, into which one can cut a circular hole for slotting in a part of the roof. All of this is designed in such a way that the front roof panel lies flat on the side wall when closed, and flat on the rear part of the roof when open. See the detail photo for what this looks like in practice.

Working out the exact measurements, and then triple-checking everything before cutting the wood, was probably the trickiest bit in the whole project.

Ok, now we know the shape of the roof, but how tall do the outer walls need to be, and where do the floors slot in? More on that in the next blog post...

Photos and design: Thomas Ulich.