Some Progress and Some Pain

Today I continued with the outer trimmings of the half scale house. I felt like the eaves and gables were too wide, so I cut them. Soon I will give them support brackets.

As you can see here, the eave is shortened, and will be given a gutter and bracket. This makes it more realistic. 

As you can see from the previous post, I had put shingles on the gable ends. After careful consideration I came to the conclusion that these were wrong. The singles were too big.

As such, I spent an hour prying them off. I had stuck them on with hot glue gun, and they were very difficult to remove. As a result of prying and jamming them off with a knife I stabbed my palm. While it was 7mm deep it was very clean, so didn't need stitches!  

I replaced the shingles with straight vertical weather boarding, which I think is finer, and more realistic.

Now the house is really taking shape.

It puts me in mind of an old farm house. I am now wracking my brain for colour schemes. I have found quite a few little houses which look like the Fairfield, though none so far who's colours I like.

Frankie Mayonnaise is bemused by the goings on.

Perhaps I will see some of you at the Melbourne Dollhouse Fair next weekend!

Exterior Cladding for the Half Scale House

I spent most of today finishing the weatherboards of the Fairfield. Since the kit does not come with any, I cut them all by hand. This was quite time consuming.

There is still a lot of work to do, but it is coming along.

A New Tower & Some Tiny Architectural Details

I have been working slowly away at the half scale house in the past few weeks. I want my little house to be a classic American style Victorian with some Neo Gothic and Second Empire influences. For example:

Unfortunately, with this style in mind, the pointed tower of the Fairfield was not suitable. So I decided to make some alterations to it. I wanted a square tower which is so common in Second Empire Victorians which have mansard roofs.

I kept the roof pieces, but trimmed the tops off and made side additions to give the square shape I wanted.

I then made the tower with flexible card. 

In addition to the tower I also needed some brackets and decorative architectural details. I searched quite widely and wasn't able to find anything of quality in 1:24 scale. So I decided to cut my own. Cutting by hand isn't so great because it does not produce uniform results so I decided to have some of my own designs laser cut. I have several pattern books of architectural details from last century, so I copied some of these designs in Adobe Illustrator. 

I then took this file to a laser cutting facility and had these patterns cut out of MDF and card. 

I made some of the brackets to be multi layered. I cut one layer of 3mm MDF and one of 1mm card, and glued them together to create more detailed brackets. 

The house is now starting to look quite good. Next I will begin the weather boards/cladding.