BADDER'S ''IT WOULD HAVE BEEN QUICKER TO BUILD A REAL FARMHOUSE AND THEN LET IT FALL TO PIECES NATURALLY''

[Badder]

The link above is for the ongoing WIP of the building pictured here. It's a long WIP.... 19 pages I think. If you take a look at the first page or two you will see that the building there was meant to be nothing more than a few ruined walls. And it's ended up a 6-room 2 storey building with full interior and roof!

 

 

Anyone who has been following my 'PIT STOP' WIP where I decided to build a ruined farmhouse, will know that it's been a long and arduous task. The main issue is as always, my strive for perfection. And that means I build, paint and weather something to what I consider the best of my ability, then move to a different area, and in the intervening weeks I look back at the first 'job' and think 'I can do that better'.  So I go back and re-work it.

 

It doesn't help also, that new ideas pop into my head as well. Like suddenly I might decide to extend the length of the building, or change the pitch of the roof!

I further complicated things by deciding in the 'latter stages' to make this building a 'multi-pose' one. So one wall in particular was 'demolished'. Two 'inserts' were made to replace it. One is more or less intact with windows and a roof, the other part-collapsed, and with or without a roof. The roof itself is made up from several sections, all or some of which can be removed. The resulting building, when it's finished, will be used as a backdrop for various winter-camo AFVs, each photographed with the building in different states of dilapidation.

 

BTW, my method for weathering is to weather everything as I go along, and not worry about it getting 'dirtied' by adjacent weathering, or damaged by knocks and scrapes. I touch up and re-do the weathering constantly throughout the build, even going as far as to remove areas right back to the bare plaster/foamboard. It's all about layering. As the title suggests, I could have just left this building out in the real weather and let that do its job!!

 

For now the building remains in two halves whilst I continue to work on the interior. The following photos show the building in various poses. But basically everything is

there in one photo or another.

So, without further ado, here's the result of a year's tinkering.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Materials used and some methodology:

 

All painting done using Acrylic Inks, except for some white enamel here and there.

Gable wall, plaster cast of MiniArt's 'Ruined Village House'. Upper floor window repositioned lower down, by approx 1cm.

All other walls either plaster casts of the gable wall, chopped up and rearranged and re-modelled, or made from something that is very similar to foamboard, but is stiffer, and more plastic-like.... advertising boards from a supermarket.

All wooden parts are made from balsa, 'bass wood' or coffee stirrers.

Glass parts: transparent plastic food packaging.

Roof battens (for tile fixing) plastic bristles from a yard brush.

Wall Plaster/Render: Either paper drenched with and fixed in place with CA, then sanded, 'cracked' with a scalpel, OR real plaster of paris, or 'no more nails'.

Red brickwork: Plaster casts of Tamiya's 'brick wall set'.

White-painted stonework around windows: plastic information labels most often found stuck in plant pots.

Drainpipes: plastic ink 'tubes' from inside Biro pens. Wall brackets for drainpipes made from heated plastic bristles from yard brush.

Guttering: 3 layers of graph paper, rolled in a half pipe around a form then doused with thin CA, turning the paper plastic-like, and very rigid. Cut, filed and sanded to the correct profile. Gutter brackets again CA'd paper.

 

Weathering: 'Plaster-dust washes' and lots of rubbing back with wet or dry brushes. Acrylic Ink washes and some rubbing back. Sand paper/files for exposing plaster or foamboard, usually followed by more washes.

 

 

And finally, the roof tiles: Again 3 whole sheets of graph paper, doused with thin CA, then marked out in rows, cut, re-arranged and CA'd to another sheet of graph paper, in columns, and again cut into rows. This gave me individual rows of tiles which although fixed to each other, had previously been cut vertically. The rows were then CA'd to each other with the uppermost row always overlapping the lower.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Thanks for looking,

I'm happy to answer any questions.

 

Rearguards,

Badder

Edited January 10, 2021 by Badder

[GREG DESTEC]

Wow😲!!!

 

That's some seriously good modelling mate 👍

 

Really nice work.

 

Cheers Greg

[TimB]

When's it going on Grand Designs?  That is some pretty awesome work!  

 

Regards

 

Tim

[Graeme H]

Good to see this one back, have enjoyed watching it decay, do like the title

 

[nick]

That really is excellent, great work. 
 

[Badder]

 

16 hours ago, Graeme H said:

Good to see this one back, have enjoyed watching it decay, do like the title

 

6 hours ago, nick said:

That really is excellent, great work. 
 

On 1/9/2021 at 2:45 PM, GREG DESTEC said:

Wow😲!!!

 

That's some seriously good modelling mate 👍

 

Really nice work.

 

16 hours ago, TimB said:

When's it going on Grand Designs?  That is some pretty awesome work!  

 

Regards

 

Tim

Cheers Greg

Thanks chaps,

It has kept me entertained throughout self-isolating, lockdowns and general staying at home-edness'.

Tim, it's not fit for Grand Designs, more your 'homes under the hammer' In need of some serious work lol.

I am about to start on the ceiling beams for the upstairs room with the chimney. If all goes well that means I will finally be able to fix the two halves of the building together. Once that's done I will have my final dimensions.

 

Rearguards,

Badder

[bigbadbadge]

What a fantastic model great work indeed, it looks amazing. 

Chris

[AdrianMF]

Wowzas! Those pictures look so real - it reminds me of some building work I had done on my last house.

 

Regards,

Adrian

[Broadway]

Looks ripe for a G

On 1/9/2021 at 10:24 PM, TimB said:

When's it going on Grand Designs?  That is some pretty awesome work!  

 

Regards

 

Tim

 

Surely we can look forward to that when this is completed 😀

[Badder]

On 1/10/2021 at 4:39 PM, bigbadbadge said:

What a fantastic model great work indeed, it looks amazing. 

Chris

 

On 1/11/2021 at 10:13 AM, AdrianMF said:

Wowzas! Those pictures look so real - it reminds me of some building work I had done on my last house.

 

Regards,

Adrian

Thanks Adrian,

I'm no architect, but I am trying to make it look believable, if somewhat a bit shoddy. I figure the farmer built it himself with a few volunteers/family helping out, so it wasn't going to be perfect..... hence bits have fallen down.

Rearguards,

Badder

On 1/10/2021 at 4:39 PM, bigbadbadge said:

What a fantastic model great work indeed, it looks amazing. 

Chris

Thanks Chris,

Much appreciated. Still a hell of a lot of work to do on the building, then I'm going to be an age covering a lot of it with ivy! lol

Rearguards,

Badder

 

On 1/12/2021 at 8:42 AM, Broadway said:

Looks ripe for a G

 

Surely we can look forward to that when this is completed 😀

 

Hi Broadway,

Whilst this farmhouse is going to be part of a diorama, I will be posting the finished article in the Diorama RFI forum, as there isn't a forum for for 'buildings'. lol

 

Rearguards,

Badder

[PlaStix]

Hi Badder. Hope you are keeping well. Great to see this project is still in progress. As I always said - your efforts to capture reality in your buildings/scenery is something to behold. Very well done. Take care.

Kind regards,

Stix 

[FrancisGL]

Hi Badder,

I also hope that you are well, the title of the topic is very good ... lol, here you can see a summary of your progress, and the form that the project is taking, which looks very good already.
I hope you finish it to your liking and we can see it to our envy ...
Cheers and TC
Francis.👍