People are paying thousands for miniature replicas of their homes

Tiny homes have suddenly gotten a lot tinier. Bloomberg reports that people are building miniature versions of their beloved houses as keepsakes to display on shelves and coffee tables. Think your childhood home, only doll-sized.

Companies like the U.K.-based Chisel & Mouse charge upwards of $2,000 to create replicas of buildings, complete with idiosyncratic details like a broken shutter or that weirdly shaped gargoyle outside your apartment building. Send a photo, layout, or drawing, and the builders will reconstruct your home using 3D printing and traditional sculpting. For most of the buildings, plaster is poured into a 3D printed plastic mold, and the details are finished by hand. It can take anywhere from 12 weeks to six months to craft a perfect replica.

Chisel & Mouse via Bloomberg

These artful mini-homes aren’t quite the same thing as the scale models architects craft to give unbuilt structures a sense of physicality. These buildings tend to be smaller and far less expensive than the $100,000 to $300,000 an average architectural model can cost.

Still, dropping thousands of dollars on a replica of your house so you can display it on your coffee table isn’t nothing. Is it weird? Maybe a little bit. But it’s also pretty dang adorable.

Via: Bloomberg