Thursday, May 15, 2014

Building simple wargaming houses NB More pics added!

There are some lovely wargaming buildings around. One of my favorites are the Conflix houses. Pretty, compact and not unreasonably  priced they are very attractive. However, a village will still set you back a few hundred Euros and they are a bit hard to come by. So I decided to try and build something similar myself. 

The inspiration for the project was a building by Conflix, called the Merchant's House if I am not mistaken. Below a picture of the original. 



I decided on the cheapest of materials available to me. Foamboard (left to me in huge quantities by the marketing department of a past employer), coffee stirrers, packing netting and cornflakes packaging. 





The parts were drawn and cut. Sizes were somewhat estimated using the figures next to the building. Use really sharp knives and a metal ruler to cut foamboard and discard the knife as soon as the tearing begins. 





The parts were glued together with a hot glue gun. I drew the timber scheme on the house with a permanent marker and then glued the timbering in place with PVA glue. Timbers were made from coffee stirrers and cut with a pair of pliers for speed. Sawing and sanding would of course produce a better result, but I was aiming for simple and fast. 



The windows were made from pieces of netting, glued underneath the window sills. Rooftiles were cut from an old cornflakes pack and glued separately on the roof. Not very fast I hear you think, but it is the only way to produce  the battered look of the original. 

The chimney is simply cut from a piece of styrofoam. Be sure to coat it with PVA Glue before spray-coating it or it will melt completely. 




The entire house was then primed black and painted with acrylics. I avoided details that would give away the scale, like a door post sign or a rain barrel, so the house would work equally well in 20mm and 28mm scale. This was the result: 



EDIT: After steadily building most of my "Tim Burton village" as my son's girlfriend calls it, is finished. I took advantage of some nice weather to take some pictures. 



12 comments:

  1. Ow stop showing off you show-boy! No seriously great stuff, I almost think I could do this too...

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  2. this is good work !
    Up to the rest of the village :-)

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  3. Great minds think alike. Great stuff. I had the same thought as you and did the same thing.
    https://woolshedwargamer.wordpress.com/2013/01/21/28mm-conflix-style-medieval-houses/

    Cheers
    Brian

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  4. Really good work. You have inspired me to make one also.

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  5. Excellent work! Very impressive!

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  6. Excellent! Doesn't look to be too complicated but the result is amazing.

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  7. Very very nice.
    Great build job

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  8. Excelent, love this building!

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