Amy Sherman-Palladino just explained how they rebuilt the “Gilmore Girls” house and it’s the best

When Gilmore Girls ended in 2007, no one thought we would go back to Stars Hollow ever again, so no one bothered to make, let alone keep, diagrams of Stars Hollow. Now flashforward to 2016, and Gilmore Girls is coming back, and someone’s got to rebuild Lorelai’s house and Luke’s Diner. What to do when you don’t exactly know how to rebuild these iconic locations?

Easy. You just rewatch old episodes of Gilmore Girls.

During Entertainment Weekly‘s PopFest on Saturday, Gilmore Girls showrunners, Amy Sherman-Palladino and Dan Palladino stopped by to discuss all things Lorelai and Rory for the upcoming Netflix revival, A Year in the Life. When they walked back onto the Warner Bros. backlot, they discovered that everything had been transformed into Pretty Little Liars (both shows filmed in the same area) and they needed to make it Stars Hollow again. They also had to do it from scratch.

“Weirdly…there were no plans and there were no drawings [for Stars Hollow], so we were just watching [old] episodes going ‘I think there was a wall there?’”Amy explained.

“Kinda like how [the aliens in] Galaxy Quest [built their spaceship]!” Dan interjected.

“Exactly! [So we built] it kinda twice as big.”

Amy then went onto explain that during the first few years of the show, they were struggling for money, and each time they got a little bit more money, they made their sets a liiiiitle bit bigger.

“The Gilmore house is actually bigger in [A Year in the Life]. We always had this issue with the Gilmore house where we didn’t have a lot of money that first season, so it was a little tiny, and it kinda looked like Ed [Herrmann, who played Richard Gilmore] was in a doll house. He was a very tall man, and the next year we had a little bit more money, so we could make a room a little bigger every year. And [with a Year in the Life, we finally had money], and it was finally big enough for Ed, and he’s not there.”

?

Oh wow, so one second we’re laughing at a Galaxy Quest comparison, and then ASP has to go and BREAK OUR HEARTS.

But hey, at least we know how to build our own Gilmore Girls house, should we ever need to. Just watch old episodes, and then make it as big as possible.