The Village Post Office

[philipy]

At the back of the station area, is my wife's Summer House. The station area itself is raised and there is a blockwork retaining wall against the side of the summerhouse. Neither of which are either 16mm or particularly scenic!
Low-relief buildings seemed to be the solution, but what buildings? I have an interest in both Family History and old buildings, and when I came across a pre-1903 photograph of a village shop and post office, which was run by a cousin of my Great-grandfather, it was too good an opportunity to miss building a model of it.
On further investigation, not only is the building still there ( now a house), it is Listed ( built 1687 ), and at some time in the past 110 years it has been to some extent restored to its pre-Victorian state. As a result, the Victorian version with rendered exterior shown in the pre-1903 picture, is now revealed as a stone building with half timbered extension, and simply begging to be modelled.







I opted for a composite version, with the building in more or less its current state, but as operated by Annie ca1900.

[philipy]

First thing to do was come up with a drawing, obviously. I'm well used to constructing drawings based on photographs, but usually there is some brickwork, to count the courses and doors to get an approximate measurement from.
This one was a bit of a puzzle because there was no clear view of the only door and the bricks were of unknown age, and therefore size. I had several attempts but the end results just didn't look quite right and I almost gave up. Then I discovered another photo, probably 1920's, by which time the front wall had been demolished and the front door was fully visible - I was in business!
It's a pretty simple building so it didn't take too long to come up with a front elevation drawing. I'm sure it's not perfect but it looks ok and who is going to argue?!

OK, now down to business.
10mm foam board was in stock and it was only a few minutes work to mark out the basic window and door positions.
Because the half-timbered section is set back slightly and I have no real idea by how much, I took the easy option and set it back by 10mm, i.e. overlapped glued one section behind the other, which is not only easy but stiffens the building in the centre (approximately).



The blocks forming the back edge of the station area are 100mm wide and there is a small front yard area which scales at about 65mm.with a stone wall at the front. The plan was to make this wall deep enough to drop below the front of the block, go back 65mm and then construct the building to occupy the space that was left.
End walls were cut to the correct sizes and a couple of intermediate spacers fitted as well, to support the roof.

A thin piece of foamboard was added to the front at the bottom for the stone plinth, and the stone and brick was then scribed on.

[philipy]

At about this point, by chance I got involved in another thread and discussion about DIY castings in resin, for windows and doors, and since there are 5 identical windows in this, I decided to give it a go.
( http://gardenrails.myfreeforum.org/ftopic8248-30.php )

However, back to the building...
Next step was to paint it. Armed with a collection of sample pots/tubes of paints  from the local DIY Shed, I first gave the whole thing a coat of a pale greyish colour, thinned slightly and a few drops of washing up liquid added to make sure it got right down into the pores and the mortar lines - that blue is a swine to lose completely in the crevices! In the end I gave it a couple of coats and even then some touching up was needed subsequently.

Then it was down to splodges of varous shades of paint on a plastic lid, some water and small paintbrush and randomly mixing colours together and applying to random stones, I worked my way round the building. This took quite a few hours and some had to be redone, before I was satisfied- the problem is that the colours tend to dry lighter than they look when first applied.
The brickwork is slightly easier. Having mixed up a  suitable base brick colour, I used a small sponge paint roller to very lightly apply it right across the face of the brick area. Then using a small paintbrush I added colour to bricks in the corners that the roller couldn't reach. Finally, varying the shade a little, I added colour to some random bricks to give a variation.

The only thing left then was to paint the timbering in a streaky greyish brown colour.

[steamie1]

REAL Modelling

[philipy]

Unfortunately, I forgot to take pictures of the next couple of stages, but basically it was a question of cleaning up and glazing the resin window castings, and gluing them in place, making the one odd window ( the LH shop window) and the door. Making the front door and canopy and letting the postbox into the front wall.
The building itself was then essentially finished apart from the roof and the fiddly finishing details, which I really enjoy doing and which bring everything to life.

The roof was clad in some vac formed tile sheets, from Ebay. They really are dolls house slates and are a bit big, but it doesn't really show in the narrow low-relief, at the back. Interestingly, the pre-1903 photo indicates that there were no gutters installed, ( I pretty sure that the building was originally thatched) although they were there in the 1920's photo. I took the easy way out and omitted them!

Although, the building will be sited at the back of a raised section, having 'something' behind the windows, is very important in my view, it transforms a dead shell into a living building, even if you can't really see what is there. Walk down any street and glance at a window, you may not be able to clearly see what is inside but you can see that there is SOMETHING there.
In the photo, the larger ground floor window seems to contain packets, etc, of groceries. Ages ago, somewhere on line, I came across a copy of a vintage advertising poster of shelves of groceries. I knew it would come in handy one day so it was duly printed out the correct size, wrapped in clear sticky-backed plastic in true Blue Peter style and fitted to a piece of styrene sheet about 15mm back from the glazing. I then trawled the net and found similar pictures of a reproduction Victorian post office and drapers, followed by domestic rooms, which were installed behind the other windows. To complete the effect I obtained some small pattern cotton fabric to use for curtains in the upper rooms.



The various signs were produced as best I could using a printer and encapsulating the paper in clear epoxy. Unfortunately this isn't as weatherproof as I had hoped and the ink is running already, so this will have to be redone somehow - I really don't want to hand paint them if it can be avoided! - Any ( polite) suggestions gratefully received!

Finally, the front wall to the yard was constructed in a similar way to the main building and the whole lot glued together.

As a finishing touch, I found some dolls house flower pots and filled them with moss and put them on the porch roof, as seen in the early photo. Whether the moss will last I don't know!

I am really quite pleased with the overall result, although it now needs another building to the LH side to hide the rest of the summerhouse!

[jim@NAL]

fantastic work there well done looks very good

[Dannypenguin]

Like that

[Peter Butler]

I love the technique and use of materials but do you leave this outside in wet weather?
If so, is there a waterproofing agent you use?

[philipy]

I love the technique and use of materials but do you leave this outside in wet weather?
If so, is there a waterproofing agent you use?

Peter,
The plan is to leave it out permanently, but its only been out for a week or so so far.
However the long brick wall, and the bridge in the background of the picture below ( and my avatar) have been out since last June. Built using the same foamboard and scribing technique and no obvious weather damage so far. The only problem I have noticed is that the birds seem to like eating the parapet of the bridge, hence the blue patch which is just visible to the left of the buttress!
Of course we've had lots of rain and wind but almost no frost, and certainly no snow, to test them.

To answer the other question, no I haven't used any kind of waterproofing, varnish, etc.

[Andrew]

Lovely stuff! With these buildings of yours and Bazzer's station and goods shed threads tempting me I feel I really must start on some buildings. My plan had been to use real materials where possible, but I reckon these foamboard techniques might be better suited to my skills and give me a better result, hmmm... Plenty to think about, but thanks for the inspiration! Wonder whether you could use the same technique to build a cobbled yard between your new buildings and he platform?

All the best,

Andrew.

[philipy]

Plenty to think about, but thanks for the inspiration! Wonder whether you could use the same technique to build a cobbled yard between your new buildings and he platform?

.

Glad to help
Interesting thought to scribe cobbles, must admit I hadnt thought of that. I'd be bit worried about stuff dropping on it, it is fairly soft, which is why it scribes so nicely.
The road surface on the bridge is "Postcrete", which seems to have stuck to the foamboard ok. I was planning to lay a bed of concrete with a topping of Postcrete to match the platform surface, for the forecourt/village square. It looks reasonably like scale gravel to my eyes?

[MDLR]

That's a very nice building - thanks for the explanation!

[bazzer42]

Some tidy work there Philip. Your stonework looks superb,. There is a "model hygenic bakery" in our village that is built with dressed stone that is tempting me to have a go. You can't beat having too many projects on the go!
what do you use for scribing? I am going to have to grind down a 5.5mm screwdriver to the right width to do vertical brick courses.

[philipy]

Some tidy work there Philip.  Your stonework looks superb,. There is a "model hygenic bakery" in our village that is built with dressed stone that is tempting me to have a go. You can't beat having too many projects on the go!
what do you use for scribing?  I am going to have to grind down a 5.5mm screwdriver to the right width to do vertical brick courses.

Each to his own, I hate having more than one thing on the go. It sometimes takes me a while to get going, but when I start something I go at it until its finished, drives me nuts otherwise!

The Hygenic Bakery sounds good. I had a 4mm Model railway friend some years ago who built one and made  superb job of it. I can't remember where the prototype was from though.

For scribing I used a fine point roller ball pen ( a dead one, but that doesn't matter) for most of it. For vertical brick course lines I used  small pair of dividers set to the correct width and just went along the horizontal courses, a pair at a time. In reality the divider points are to fine, they tended to dig in and drag, whereas the pen tip being larger diameter just deformed the surface.