Pimp my Hovel

As the weather has been good I have taken the opportunity to enhance my collection of AWI buildings to produce a rather grand looking house suitable for a small town or a plantation in the souther colonies. Below is the finished frontage and the second photo shows they type of hovels building that forms the core of the structure.


I have actually had this house for a very long time but haven't often used it on the table as it is quite a dull design and I was keen to add some bits and bobs to the basic house. As with most Hovels buildings the size is a good one for wargamers, having the right kind of "look" but without being too large. My house suffered from a noticable bowed front wall and many of the corners could not be described as square. This adds to the challenge of adding new parts as they have to fit around these problems!




The next photo shows how I have added a verandah and balcony to the front and a kitchen/extension to the rear, along with some groundwork to make the building look more "lived-in". The barrels are mainly from Hovels, along with one from Renedra.




At the rear of the house is a piece of fencing, originally from the Hovels livery stable set but chopped down a bit. This is really useful fencing for this kind of project. A half-barrel has been added from the Renedra sprue. The groundwork includes static grass, clump foliage and some Woodland Scenics purple stuff. The path is made from rectangles of thin currugated card.



The rear extension was made from 5mm foamcore and the windows are cut from a fly-swatter. The roof of the extension is made of thin card and the exposed brickwork is simply made by peeling off the top layer from the foarcore and scoring with a biro.








At the front I started with the floor of the veranda, which is a piece of foamcore to which I glued strips of thin card as planking. A similar construction produced the balcony and both were hot-glued to the building. The pillars are cut from foamcore and extra facing was provided by chopping up wooden coffee-stirrers. The balustrade on the balcony has been made from coffee stirrers, plastic rod and matchsticks. At some point this might get replaced by commercial balustrade, but it will do for now. The roof was added after much of the painting was complete and consists of some triangles of foamcore as supports, topped with a roof of thin card.



As access to the balcony is required by the inhabitants, I added a set of french windows. These were cut from a fly swatter and arranged in a construction of more foamcore, matchsticks and coffee stirrers to cover-up the original window and shutters.





Overall I am really chuffed with how this has turned out. The balustrade isn't perfect but is easily replaced and it isn't possible to cover up all of the imperfections of the original - not least the windows which are really difficult to paint well. This will fit in well with my other buildings and will be added to the town on my table at Partizan in Newark next weekend.




See you there!



Comments

  1. Really nice building, lovely details. The garden/patio parts are great!

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  2. Lovely looking building sir! ... Good work.

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  3. Love the Hovel terrain and your additions are fantastic!!

    Christopher

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  4. You made an amazing job making such a lovely house from that dull hovel building. Very nice !

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  5. Great stuff, I enjoy reading all your terrain projects.

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  6. This is a truly incredible piece of model making! How long did it take you to do?

    Eddie

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  7. Thanks for the kind comments.

    Eddie, it all took about 3 hours, if you ignore time for paint & glue to dry. A hot glue gun helps to make the big elements of construction fast, contact adhesive also helps, but there is no escape from PVA for gluing roof tiles etc!

    Painting is literally "broad brush", it really can take forever if you don't relax about it :-)

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  8. WoW! what a brilliant masterpiece. .lovely building.=)

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