Posted by Dom | Posted in Techniques, Updates | Posted on 15-03-2010
For this section of the build I installed the chimneys first, after assembling them. I painted them by dry-brushing a couple of colors over the gray primer coat. I used a ca glue to assemble them and to fix them to the wall. I then cut each of the pieces of the parapet into the correct length, and then held it up to its final location to judge the angle I needed to cut it at. As you can see in the picture there was a slight gap between each one, but I was able to use Squadron white putty to cover those. You can’t see it from the picture but I made sure to paint each of the pieces before installing them, as it would have been difficult with them already in place.

After the glue had dried (it took only a couple of minutes) I began the installation of the special molding on both the parapet and the top section of the mansard roof. At each of the major corners I left a gap for the “spike” that would go into place. In this picture you can also see that I began to fill in the top of the bay window with putty.

Posted by Dom | Posted in Techniques, Updates | Posted on 02-03-2010
After I finished installing all of the copper sections of the roof, I painted the top section of the roof using floquil’s roof brown. As I did not mask the top section when spraying the contact cement, it left a little bit of texture. My only intent was to save time when masking as it would be covered by the fine ballast. Once the paint had dried I painted on Woodland Scenic’s Scenic Cement on to the roof. I then held the model over a small box and sprinkled the fine ballast into the glue.

After knocking off the excess ballast I used a medicine dropper to float extra scenic cement into the areas needed for complete coverage. I painted the white areas of the roof with a color to match the rest of the copper roofing.

After waiting for the glue to dry I dry-brushed the copper areas of the roof. I did this by using five different colors, starting with a dark green, then a lighter green, followed by a dark grey for shadows, and then a light grey and a final very light coat of white for the highlights. The green was only on the copper sections of the roof, the grey highlights continued onto the gravel on the roof.

Posted by Dom | Posted in Techniques, Updates | Posted on 18-02-2010
Once I had all of the brick paper glued into place, and the windows and door openings had been cut out, I started working on the roof. I made sure to test the fit of each piece before gluing it in place using the Elmer’s wood glue.
Going back to cutting out the windows, I found that the easiest way to do this was to stab in the general area of the window with a hobby knife, and carefully cut around the edge of the cardstock. I also found that using a slight sawing motion had the best results.

For the mansard portion of the roof the overlap on the panels match the placement of the wall panels below. After gluing all of the mansard sections I glued the top in place, and once it had dried I used a hobby knife and cut top to match the panels as needed. Installing the tower panels brought about quite a lot of cutting and fitting. There was one panel with a bit of overlap at the final part, but once I had tapered them into each other it balanced out. The top section was very challenging as the pieces did not fit together very well. I had to make slight adjustments to two of the large pieces, and had to custom cut panels for the D and E sections. In hind-sight it might have been easier to cut a little bit from each of the other panels to make them fit, however it looks OK.
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Doing the top portion of the roof in this way most likely made the pitch of the upper roof different than the kit, but looking at examples elsewhere it is not an issue.
Posted by Dom | Posted in Techniques, Updates | Posted on 11-02-2010
I continued the construction of Dorothy’s house, using the Micro-Mark magnetic gluing jig to hold the bottom of the walls while they were being glued. At the top of the walls I used the the blue painter’s tape to hold the walls until the glue dried. I found that using Elmer’s wood glue works very well on the cardstock walls, and that you usually only need to hold it into place for a couple of minutes.

After getting the walls glued to the top and bottom floors I waited for them to cure and then added the interior floors, making sure to line them up with the wallpaper on the inside. I found that the magnets for the jig happened to be the correct height to hold the first floor at the correct level while it dried. The floors are made by using the embossed sheet, which I glued to the cardstock using the 3M contact cement. I then painted them using PolyScale roof brown, as I think it matched the color of that type of floor quite well.

After painting the area between the first floor and the sub floor a dark color I glued the remaining walls in place. I did not glue the back wall on as I am considering putting an interior in this house. Here is the picture of the building with all of the walls in place:

The next step will be to paint and install the brick paper.