At this point, you may be asking why I built it all by myself. That's a good question, which leads me off to a little voyage of self-analysis.
On the rare occasion when I watch a movie, I always watch the credits to the very end. Nowadays, there is often some sort of trailer, or other "easter egg" in the credits. But that's not why. I want to know whether any animals (or aliens) were harmed in the making of the film. And I want to know who catered it. And I want to know some of the obscure credits they saw fit to include, and to look for funny names. But the main reason is to sit in stunned, appreciative amazement at the number of human beings (and rendering server farms) that came together to produce the film. I am awed by the organization and the communication and the project management required to produce a movie. I am impressed beyond words (almost) by the hierarchies upon hierarchies constructed to make this even possible.
Sometimes I get to work on a project team, and occasionally even get to lead one. I enjoy working on a team, and the organizational tricks and tools that we use to accomplish the task at hand.
But just as often, I wind up working by myself. I move my dock by myself. I solve networking problems by myself. I create my own backup systems, and write my own web pages by hand. A fair number of my patents just list a single inventor.
This is not the recommended way. It is certainly not the most efficient way, in general. It produces some rather mundane web pages. And it certainly limits my ability to turn my wild ideas into wild reality.
Sometime I picture being like Thomas Alva Edison, or Alexander Graham Bell, with scores of busy minions chasing down and implementing my craziest schemes.
But that's not how it is. Due to my nature or my nurture (probably both), I wind up working by myself.
In the case of the Doll House, as with most of my self-justifications, I have some Good Reasons for working on it myself.
Plenty of people volunteered to help, but I couldn't figure out how to overcome several obstacles. My house is about 50 miles from my office, to start with. And my "shop" barely had room for me to get around as the Doll House started to take shape, much less having room for helpers. But, probably most significant, I was designing on the fly. I did have an overall design, but there were scores of little details, each affected by, and affecting, other related aspects. If I had been going to build more than one, it would have made sense to plan and draw out those details. But in this case, this seemed like the best way to accomplish the task at hand.
Plus, I was the one who had committed to the schedule, and the design, and who was willing to work over the holidays, and I wouldn't have felt right dragging someone else into that.
Now that we've finished that trip into self-analysis, perhaps we can move on.