Making a square house for Porto Pulpo

So, at work, I noticed one of these things, for holding cookies. The moment I saw it I just knew I would be able to use it somehow for my scenery, but, of course I couldn't just take one home...

A few months later, I was doing late shift, and upon preparing mlyself to walk home, I notice one in a dustbin... mine!


Turned upside down, it has a cool shape for a roof, without me having to construct something.

Once at home, I immediately took out some cardboard, measured up the sides of the roof, deducted one centimeter and drew and cut out 4 walls with an exacto knife. The height of the walls was determined by the height of those Mordheim sprues corners for the cardboard buildings.

Now, as a square building can be cool, I still like to alter it's shape, adding an outhouse, a cellar entrance and then some (remember, I had a couple of months to think on what exactly I was going to do), so I took the windows and door I wanted to incorporate, and drew out where exactly they should come,so that afterwards I don't have a windo where the door should've been


The next step consisted of cutting out the windows, regularly proof-fitting the plastic windowframes, to be sure n cardboard was visible behind them, and ensuring I didn't cut holes that were too large


Now, I had been pondering quite a while on the walls... don't want 'm all wood, and don't want 'm all bricks, but I still need texture. So I decided on an experiment... Did it work? No idea, I'll only know when I hit the painting-stage.

First off, I cut out 4 pieces of newspaper in the same size as the walls

Then I pressed them together into little balls

I flattened them out again, and glued them on the walls with watered down PVA. The newspaper will soak up the PVA, making it nice and hard.

At this stage, I called it a night, just to make sure the PVA had dried up completely before I moved on to the next step...

The next evening, after a complete and whole day of anticipation @ work, I arrived home and a wee while later checked the walls...

They had warped a little, but nothing too serious... Will need a way to remedy that, but, first things first, I cut out the windows again, out of the newspapers this time (easy, as the holes were already there in the cardboard)


Then, with PVA, I glued the Mordheim plastic windoframes into their places, made a door from the Mordheim doorframe and coffee-stirrers (no, those aren't from Mordheim)

Then I dry-fitted all four walls to their Mordheim corners so I could check it the roof still fit...

Why the dry-fit? Mainly so I could check it the roof still fit...

Sooo... I guess it didn't LOL
Simple solution, I cut one centimeter off of every wall, some 0.5 cm on each side, others a whole cm on one side.
Re-dry-fit...

Niiiiiice. A little overhang which 'll become bigger once I add the roof tiles, just as I wanted it.
I like!

Now, my walls are still warped, and I can't seem to be able to bend them straight again.
So out comes a length of my precioussss balsa-wood (which is actually way to expensive to use for this purpose...) and PVA them into place to reinforce and straighten out the walls.

Added bonus of the balsa : it'll give me a bigger surface for when I'll be glueing the building to it's base.

Add some clothespins to keep them into place, and call it a night, so the PVA can dry out nice and easy.

Why didn't I do this first? Well, the clothespins are neccessary for straightening, and they would impede me with any other work, so I waited with them until just before bed-time...

Hope you guys like what you see thus far!
I'll try and do an update tomorrow.

That looks like it's going to work!

It's an interesting approach to the Beasty...it looks like it will turn out VERY NICELY. Keep up the GOOD WORK!

If I just have had this idea when I built my scenery .....

Really nice work thus far

Thanks!

After a night of drying out, the balsa-wood beams have done their work purrrfectly.
I can now present to you... 4 straight walls!


Time to get the last detailing done, before I glue all four walls together.
First off, the door.

From a cereal-box, I cut two hinges with a scissors and PVA'd them to the door (glossy side in, as paint tends to flake off if you put the glossy side out!)

Then I drilled two holes into each hinge, and put a small ball of greenstuff on the other side of the door.


Then I pushed a rounded object (the non-business end of a paintbrush in this Case), in the middle of the greenstuff ball, creating a door-knocker, and I inserted 4 flathead pins into the holes I drilled, so that the hinges look bolted into place.

I realise now that I forgot to take a picture of the finished door ; will remedy that in one of the later updates

Up until now, when I wanted to add bricks/stones to a build, I made them out of milliput (check my well, my fountain or my Cthulhu statue to see how that turns out); but last week, I scored a supply of plasticard bricks, rather uneven, and I wanted to try those out.

Work immediately goes a lot faster if you can just add plasticard bricks in stead of sculpting them all. I am curious though how they'll turn out once painted.

So I measured out how long the bricks needed to be for all the walls and I cut strips of that length off of the plasticard


Now, before I glue those into place, I needed to glue the four walls together, as the Mordheim corners will fit over my cardboard, but not over the cardboard + a layer of plasticard.
So, this is what the house looks like now (you can see the bolts on the doorhinges in the first piccie):



Again, as quite a lot of PVA was used, I decided to call it a night to let everything dry.

Onwards and forwards to basing the house tomorrow. Once the base is in place, I can start making the outhouse, door cellar, ...

Oh, and I mustn't forget the rooftiles!
From experience on my well, you can do one or two rows max before you have to let the PVA dry up lest your next rows will start pushing the previous rows down.
But before I do rooftiles, I have got to make a chimney first... very important that!

On the roof, you'll probably have noticed the big flat area on top.
I have had a couple of ideas on what to do with that area :
° Build the rest of a pointed roof
° Make a little 'house on the house', a bit like a bell-tower
° Make some sort of crows' nest, with a monocular
° Listen to any cool suggestions you guys might have

Cheers for reading!

Glad to see it all came together SO NICELY. This looks to be a BEAUTY once completed. Keep up the GOOD WORK!

For the roof, being in a harbor town, you might do a widow's walk for the top section.

Nice idea, to me it looks great, cant wait to see it covered by rooftiles. Well, its the same with me, the best ideas occur while you are working.

Widow's walk! That's the term I was looking for! Thanks

Nice start ! Good idea to texture the walls with newspaper.

looking great!
I'm also curious to learn where you picked that plasticard up?

neuh, We'll see sether it's a good idea when I get around to the painting

Capt'n Bernhardt, that's what I asked the British guy who built the Salty Dog for me.
And I arranged a swapsies with him, so I've got my small personal stash too now.

In the meantime, as I said, I forgot to take a picture of the completed door, here's the close-up.


Next up, before I start adding details to the walls, like outhouses and such, I need to base my house, so out comes the plasticard... To make it easier for me, I already drew out what I wanted to be where, so I'm sure to cut off a large enough base


Once glued onto the base, I decided to put the build through a stress-test... here it is under my wooden painting-trunk


Whilst that was drying, I decided to start working the roof (not that I did have many options), and I decided to go with the widow's walk, especially since I found some iron fences in my 40K vehicle bitzbox (yes, I know, only one bitsbox, but it is a big, big bitzbox)
So out come the coffee stirrers. Where I wanted the hatch to be, I glued the sticks in the other direction...

Then I added some details to the hatch

And two handles

A little later I had added all fences

And this is what that looks like on the house

Now this looks OK, but still, it needs somethin extra... luckily, I came across these on my rummage through my bitzbox :

After some cutting, a really small ball of greenstuff and some poly cement, this is what came out :

One dry-fit later, I knew it didn't clear the fences, so that wouldn't do... at all...
Easies way to get some height? Like this :

Glued into place :

And a size-comparison with a 28mm fig

Still waiting for arr the PVA to dry, I started on a lean-to shed...
First some cardboard

Then glue some squares on the cardboard

And cover them in coffe stirrers

Cover the rest of the wall...

Wash, rice, repeat on the other walls + roof

And then the shed looks like this



Then, I started to make the wooden beams on the walls where I was certain no more outhouses would be added :



And to finish off, I started making a cellar-entrance (again using cardboard as base material)

Now, the moment I'd been waiting for for quite a while, my children finally finished their box of cereals... Mine!

Measure out some strips...

Cut them out

Cut those into small rectangles (without measuring for a nice mix of different sizes)


And glue them to one of the sides I'm 100% sure won't be getting the chimney (the two sides covered by the monocular)
First, I wanted to cut the corners, making them kang over the roofs' edge, but I had forgotten to take the coffe stirrers into account on my shed... This now came so high, I can't make the roof any longer or it will rest crookedly on the shed
**edit** oh yeah, almost forgot the important bit, glue the shiny side in, because paint tends to flake off of the shiny side, an problem you won't have with the non-shiny side **/edit**

Do the second side, and cover the corner in one large strip...


Now I really need to make a chimney before I take this roof any further...

That's all for now folks!

EXCELLENT PROGRESS! The place is taking shape TERRIFICALLY; AND the level of detailing is OUTSTANDING. GREAT WORK!

Thanks!

Now, after having posted, yesterday evening, I took the doggie for her evening walk.
And whilst walking, I had an idea to add some more details to the roof...

So, in stead of going to bed, I first made a small structure out of cereal box cardboard, and once I'd gotten the angles right, transferred the design to some sturdier cardboard.
And this is what that looks like :

Add the newspaper treatment, a window and some wood :

And glue into place

After which, upon the folding of the arms (ach wailie wailie, not the folding of the arms!) and the tapping of the feet (ach wailie wailie wailie, not the tapping of the feet!) I decided to call it a night and go to bed.

Today, sitting at home because we're having the hall redone, I first detailed the cellar entrance

The handles are from 40K vehicle sprues (it continues to amaze me how useful 40K bitz can be for your fantasy builds)
And I added a quick win nect to the cellar entrance, these just needed glueing into place

Confident that the structure from yesterday had thoroughly dried, I added rooftiles :


And that's all up until now

Stay tuned!

And I've just finished tiling the roof-part...


Here you can see all the latest updates into one single piccie

Now I need to make me a chimney; but first to the store, get kids from school etc.

Oh, great stuff!

Theo

To be honest I was doubtful when first saw your project. But at the end it turned out to be an excellent piece of terrain! Very well done!

Why the doubts? What was it that made you go "hmmmmmmm"?

Vagabond wrote:

But at the end it turned out to be an excellent piece of terrain!

At the end? The end?
I'm far from finished yet!

There's still one wall that's entirely bland and needs-a-detailing, there's one part of the roof that needs to be chimneyed and tiled, and I haven't even started on the base yet!

Your making great progress. Love it so far.

WONDERFUL PROGRESS! The roof looks GREAT; AND I love all the embellishments your adding. FINE WORK!

Quase wrote:

Why the doubts? What was it that made you go "hmmmmmmm"?

Vagabond wrote:

But at the end it turned out to be an excellent piece of terrain!

At the end? The end?
I'm far from finished yet!

There's still one wall that's entirely bland and needs-a-detailing, there's one part of the roof that needs to be chimneyed and tiled, and I haven't even started on the base yet!

The roof seemed to me to high in relation to the walls... But it was my mistake! Everything was/is in divine proportion!

Thanks!

I was a b it woried about that in the beginning too, that's why I added all those enlargements to the house, making it wider in most of the directions.

Just to be sure, included in the next update, I'll take some pictures from a 28mm fig point-of-view, and if I remember I'll even add some pirates to the pictures too, it's true that I usually have one or two pirates at hand, to hold next to my builds, just to make sure everything looks sufficiently in scale whilst I'm a cutting and a glueing, so might as well share this measuring with you guys