Skip to main content

Laying it all out

Today for the first time I got at least a portion of each kit down on the floor, just to start to get a sense of how this was actually going to come together. The good news: it does seem like it's actually going to come together!


Behind the street frontage on the right, you can see two Butterwick House kits, which are going to form the galleried part of the galleried coaching inn. Then there'll be another arch, one of only two kits that aren't from Petite Properties. The other I can't even really call a kit as it is the carriage house in the lower left corner of the picture, which I got used on eBay and then heavily "renovated." But more on that later. Beyond the arch in the outer yard will be a Hobbler's Loft kit, serving as stables and that second kitchen I keep talking about, and then an additional stable building.


You can start to get a sense of what the frontage is going to look like. I haven't put on any of the timber frame trim yet, though. I want to get everything further along just in case I change my mind on colors. Namely, I can't decide whether I want the two houses to have the same color plaster and timber, or have Tanglewood Hall have a more contrasting set of colors (Traveller's Rest is already pretty well locked in because I had to do the coachway timbers. 


And yes I couldn't resist seeing what it looked like with an actual stagecoach in front! I had been hoping that my Brumm models would fit, but they are 1:43 and just looked too huge compared to it.  I was fortunate to find Matchbox did a 1:48 stagecoach, though, so I picked up one of those. 

As you can see by the tape measure in the picture, I'm trying to get a sense of overall measurement so I can decide on what I'm going to do for the base. Right now I am still leaning towards doing a turntable, but my original plan to get one of the electrified turntables is limited in that the Herdwick lights/fireplaces can only go about 5 to one coin battery, and putting them on something stronger wasn't recommended. So I think I am going to get a 12th scale regular turntable base and then do a series of quarter scale lighting drawers all glued together on top of it. That should allow it to still turn but provide access to each individual house's lighting.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Where I bought all of the things

Updated 8/28/2021 with new shops I've noticed: I have been afraid to start on this post because it means going back through SO MANY posts and Pinterest pins and who knows what else, but I also know it's something I can do because I can recall how difficult it was to find items when I was looking to source everything I needed for this project. So this is as complete a list as I can make it, which means it's probably not complete at all...there are certainly shops missing where I just forgot where I got things or purchased one item from an Etsy or eBay store. I hope it will still be helpful to folks, though! Shops are generally listed under the category where I got the most items from but if I got a lot from several categories they are cross-listed. I've also included some web sites that have been on my radar or used for other projects even if I didn't use them for this one. They're  noted as such. These are all 1:48 scale or O Scale unless otherwise noted. Please...
3 comments
Read more

Real flagstone floors for quarter scale

One of the things I've been doing for all of the buildings in the project is using real stones for flagstone floors, which I think really gives it a more authentic feel. I get them from Stacey's Miniature Masonry , and I thought I'd post a tutorial here on how they're done. The stones and mortar (which Stacey's also sells) come with instructions, but I think it'll be handy to see photos of the process. I like to lay down a coat of paint before starting, to give the stones something better to stick to, although there won't be any gaps once it's done. Then the first step of laying the floor is to glue all of the stones down with PVA adhesive (tacky glue). The recommended way to do it is to plan them all out in advance, but I don't have patience for that so I usually just wing it! That's probably how they did them back then anyway, right? At some point you'll probably need to cut a stone or two in half to get ones that fit your last remainin...
Post a Comment
Read more

Coach House

In all my work to get the coaching inn done, I neglected to post the last building here! That's the coach house, and in some ways it's the one that had the longest journey. This was the only item that was a rehabilitation rather than a scratch build. I bought it on eBay and it was in pretty sorry shape when I got it. The photo below shows it after an initial sanding and removing all of the windows and doors. After that it got the same exterior stone as the small stables , done in clay rather than polyfilla as I preferred for the later buildings. The clay just dried too quickly and it felt like a stressful race against time! Plus it was never entirely under control as to how much the clay would shrink. Like the other ground floors, it also got a flagstone floor, shown here in progress: Since it is a carriage house I knew I wanted to put some sort of carriage inside, but I ran into a real challenge in that the stagecoach I'd intended to put inside didn't fit! I'd also...
Post a Comment
Read more