Outbuilding

So I have been making buildings for a little while now, and have done mostly half-timbered houses and brick and plaster houses. So this week I decided to do something a little different. Originally I was going to make this a completely wooden barn but decided instead to to make it combination of materials. The sides are milled lumber while the front and back are brick or stone covered with plaster. It is supped to be a detached garage or shed, perhaps for a railroad?

Here we see Fritz snooping around, probably looking to steal my Duesenburg Model J I have safely stashed away in the building.

The building is made out of the ubiquitous insulation foam. The base is hardboard painted with a brown base coat and then flocked. I tried to give the wood a faded look that you often see on old wood where it turns a gray color from exposure to the elements, instead of just painting it brown. So after painting it gray I tried to make it look as though there were still some red paint still tenaciously clinging. However, I think I laid the red on a little thick to I didn't quite get the look I was going for but I think it still looks good, just not as weathered as I wanted. 

 The roof was constructed out of a piece of cardboard that I glued short strips of card stock to. Yep, one at a time. How long does this take? Well in this case it took me 1 hour and 40 minutes. I know this because I was watched ParaNorman with the family while I glued them on. BTW, this how I often work on my projects. Sure, they think I am weird, but they are used to it.

It used to be that I cut each shingle out by hand using a pair of scissors or a hobby knife. Then one fortuitous day I was shedding some old bills when I noticed that the width that it cut was about the same width of the shingles I had been cutting. So I put some card stock through the shredder and it came out fine. I then cut a dozen or so of the 1/4" strips at a time, easily making enough shingles to do the entire roof in a few minutes. Still, you have to glue them on one at a time, but I think the haphazard nature adds to the character of the building. A regular pattern of shingles would be fine for modern buildings but not for older buildings in my opinion. By the way, thicker card like that from cereal boxes are to thick to be cut by my shredder, and probably yours as well. That is unless you have one of those fancy shredders that cut through CD's and all sorts of other things.