Making a square house for Porto Pulpo

2 Evenings of modelling fun have gone by...
Progress report.

But, before I begin, here's a picture of the build so far, with some figurants to get a better grasp of the dimensions of the house


First, I made the base structure for my chimney, again, test-building a chimney from cereal-box cardboard before using up my preciousss thicker cardboard :


Whilst that was drying, I started working on the details for my final wall (about time too!)
Re-using the tested techniques of pre-building with thin cardboard, covering with wrinkeled newspaper (still crossing my fingers hoping that it'll turn out right once painted), here is what it looks like :


And here you can see the reinforcements of the inside, and the 'legs' on which this little structure will be standing :


And let all of that dry overnight.

Then, detailing the chimney, so I whipped out my Milliput.
I roll sausages which I press into place, work with a moist thumb to shape them, using a soft-tipped sculpting tool to get the straight edges
Here you can see one such sausage, ready to be pressed into place

Once the whole chimney was covered, I took a scrap of newspaper (again) and rolled it into a ball (again).
I then pressed this ball into my stones, turning the ball in all directions so that I get a nice texturing
Here's the finished product


I just need to do the top of the chimney, but will let the milliput dry first, so as not to ruin my previous work with an ill-placed thumb of finger.
So I glued my structure to the house :

And I modelled a pavement in front of my house, same procedure and materials as for the stones in the chimney.


Milliput all around the place means that I have to stop working right now, as it needs to cure.

Next update will see flock applied to the base, the finishing of the chimney and (hopefully) the tiling of the last part of the roof.

It's looking good. Like your way of doing the stone work.

The place is coming along quite nicely & fast. The chimney & stonework look FINE. I usually use the plumber's epoxy in lieu of the Milliput; it works the same, but dries quicker...usually. Keep up the GREAT WORK!

OK,

So what was foreseen for this update?

Flock applied to the base

*check*

Finishing the chimney...
First I made the top part bigger than it already was, simply by adding one layer of cardboard on each side :

Covered in milliput :


*check*

Tiling of the roof :
Small roof

Big roof

*check*

Then, because I found the top-tiles a bit too large to my tastes, I added a wooden beam at the top of the roof, one on each side :

And, because I liked how that looked, I used wood to cover the transparent plastic on the roof too


Some small details here and there to bring the house alive, and to add that port-feeling :



And the build has come to an end...
Here's a last piccie, with some willing volunteers, just before priming :

And how the building looks after the primer :


Next update of the painted end-product somewhere in the not-so-far-future in the Porto Pulpo thread

Cheers for sitting out the ride guys!

Uh, isn't the chimney to big? And I think that it's not properly positioned compared to windows...

Too big?

I was kind of afraid of that remark..... 2 mm on each side makes a lot of difference in a 28mm scale...

The windows aren't an issue : the roof isn't fixed, and I can rotate it to face any which way I want

You certainly have been busy. While the chimney may be a bit large, once you've turned it to a wall without any windows it should work okay; i.e.,it's about the same width as the door, which is about right.

Looks great.

You could make a few small changes to make the chimney work.
Add a few pipes out the top of it and add a sign to the outside that indicates this is a bakery or smoke house (smoking fish maybe). that would be reason to have such a large chimney as there would be a lot of fires inside to do the work needed. Linning it up to the right to use your side house may work wounders for this, though it may mean the need to brick up that building now.

I'll dry-fit some pipes with blue-tac and share piccies to see how that will work.

And I'll turn the roof around to see how it works on differen sides of the house.

My shed won't get bricked up though, as it isn't part of the house, it's built next to the house and I'd like to keep it that way

I also think the chimney look a little bit big ,and I think why it is so is because that it looks out of scale compared to the rest of the model.
The actual size of the chimney isn't the problem, rather the size of the stones. The look out of scale compared to the rest of the house, and it doesn't look like the house could support the weight of the stones.
Compare the big stones of the chimney with the brickwork at the bottom of the house (not the ground) and you hopefully see my point.
I think the rest of the house is lovely and it would be sad to see the chimney bring it down so to speak.

OK,

I will take all feedback into account, of course, if I didn't value constructive criticism, I wouldn't be sharing my piccies.

I'm just trying to get my mind across of the problems involved in resizing the chimney and/or the bricks of the chimney; because it will leave gaps all around in between the chimney and the rooftiles

And then onto the top of the chimney, which 'll be hard to cover in plasticard bricks...

But the biggest problem will be how to take off the chimney without damaging the base structure of the chimney, and without damaging the roof.
I have all the confidence in the strength of my bonds, hence I am a wee bit worried about destroying what I already made.

I'll keep you guys posted!

Project : Chimney refurbishment - progress report

Step 1
Rip off the chimney

Actually, I didn't 'rip' it off, I carefully removed it, cutting through the glue, a process that was quite more time-consuming than I imagined

Step 2
Remove the bricks. Again, quite time consuming as I was fully intent on keeping the base structure of the chimney intact

Mission accomplished

Step 3
Apply new bricks, in scale with the bricks at the bottom of the house, as I used the same plasticard sheets


Step 4
Greenstuff the gaps in the corners of the chimney


Step 5
Milliput new bricks on the top of the chimney
Why milliput here? There were just to many corners in order to be able to make all the bricks match

Upon processing this last picture, I noticed my milliput bricks were waaay too smooth, so I ran back downstairs and worked the 'ball of newspaper' magic on them.

Next update will see me refit the chimney to the roof, probably a bit higher up.
Since I have to redo my rooftiles anyway, as the chimney is now considerably less wide than before...

How do you guys like this new version so far?

That is quite an improvement. GREAT WORK!
Try roughing up the Milliput with some coarse sand paper. I normal use plumber's epoxy, which is similar to Milliput. Although I normally rough up the stonework by drawing a hobby knife across the area before it dries, sanding in a circular manner usually will yield a nice texture.

Fantastic work, mate. You took on board the constructive feedback from these friendly people and made a massive improvement on that chimney!

Love the little details you've been putting on the building too. Makes the house look very unique.

Joao

Now it looks much better! Bravo for consideration of our comments and suggestions!

Thanks!
Glad I'm back on track...

Step 6
Glue new chimney, higher up on the roof, with reworked rooftiles, and with the roof orientated in the right direction.

And a side view of the chimney


Primer 's already dried up, and I've started painting!

That is quite an improvement. The chimney looks GREAT. I like the slightly off perpendicular angle...it fits with the Mordheim look. ENJOY the painting!