Farmhouse scratch build

This week’s project has been a generic North American farmhouse. I wanted a model with a small footprint but which would still look plausible alongside my 28mm AWI armies. 





In my box of bases I found a 120mm x 80mm MDF base left over from basing my Late Roman and Arthurian armies in an “Impetus” style. This seemed a fair size for a first experiment. 

The shape was based on the Perry/Renedra plastic farmhouse. 

I constructed the walls from 5mm foamcore and these were then clad with card strips cut from an old box. The strips were overlapped to look like planking. I find it easier to do this for each wall individually, then trim the “planking” before gluing the structure together. The planking on the house ends was cut flush to the size of the walls, but that on the front and back was left with a 3mm overhang to partly cover the bare foamcore after assembly, the remaining gap being tidied up with matchsticks. I also used matchsticks to even up the gable ends. A balsa offcut provided planking for the porch area once scribed with a pen. Lastly a piece of foamcore provided the basic shape of the chimney. 







A roof was cut from thick card and covered with “shingles”. These were just strips of paper cut with a “fringe” then glued down in and overlapping pattern. Once the glue dried the roof pieces were trimmed with scissors and glued in place. 

The chimney was made from DAS air-drying clay. The stone pattern was made using the cut-down ferrule of an old paintbrush. More matchsticks were used to complete the porch, windowsills, etc and more thin card tidied up the ends of the roof. A couple of plastic barrels help add interest to the outside along with some fine sand:







Once everything was dry/hardened it was all sprayed dark brown. Once this dried there was a lighter spraying of white. 

I then painted the model with acrylics, using some washes on the way. Finally I used the same materials to finish the base as I use for figure basing, to tie everything together. 

It will probably get a spray of matt varnish as some point, but I’m happy with it anyway. Here are more shots of the house on a battlefield and better lit shots of the almost finished version (without static grass). 

















Comments

  1. Fantastic! That turned out so well! I've started projects like this, but never had the patience to see them through, so this is quite inspiring.

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  2. Excellent build! Well done.

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  3. Great looking (and sized) building! I always seem to build too big, this is a much better size!
    Best Iain

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