Quarter Scale Coaching Inn

 I had to take a big break on the coaching inn project to do a couple of Christmas projects, so it's only been lately that I've gotten back to this one. Which was a bit of a shame as I was *almost* done, but then again I didn't want to rush this one, given I've been working on it for years. I got the rest of the houses in and wired, and did a lot of gravel work to lay that down. Then really the last thing to do was to put in the details...lots of animals, baggage for the yard, and other items. Except for the horses, the animals are from mini-gems . The wooden trunk and gold bird cage are from Petworth Miniatures , while most trunks and barrels are either from Skytrex or S&D Models . The pump and trough are from Herdwick Landscapes . The hand cart in the yard is from Petite Properties , with a basket from Stewart Dollhouse . The stagecoach in the yard is an old Tally-Ho stagecoach and horses kit; since I already had the Matchbox stagecoach and horses out front I jus...

So if it seems like I've abandoned this project, I haven't...I've just been working and working without completing much of anything. That's because I've been on the joining of the two Butterwick houses to create the gallery for months now. But now it's done! This was a complex process, albeit mostly executed by me flying by the seat of my pants. It was all done with pieces of wood cut to mostly fit and then glued into place, with liberal amounts of Crackshot to even things out and fill in the gaps, and also some landscaping mesh to fill in on the back part of the roof. Rather than try to explain it all, though, I'll just share my photos, which I think do a better job of this! The one thing I did not do that I should have is draw a substantial line up the center groove of the roof. I ended up going off kilter as I went along laying tiles, so a bit of "surgery" was needed. Thi...

When I realized I couldn't divide a floor in one of my Butterwick houses to form a dining room and billiard room, I gave up on having a billiard room and thought my nice table would need to go in another project in the future. What I didn't realize, though, is that my coaching arch from Scale Model Buildings had an additional floor above the main floor I thought I was getting. I kit-bashed it a bit, as it was intended to be a loft accessed by a ladder. One of the things I've had to decide with this project is that it's not always going to be clear how people get up to certain rooms or move from room to room (except for the super-lovely staircase that'll happen on the floor below this one). It's just a sacrifice I think you have to make in this scale sometimes. There isn't a lot of room with the roof angled up there, but the billiard table will JUST fit (tall people might need to bend over to play, haha!). The wallpaper is Mini Minutia from Etsy , lov...

I've been making a lot of progress again, but hadn't really completed anything until today, and I'm excited to share this one as I'm quite chuffed with how it turned out. This is one of the rooms in one of my few non-Petite Properties buildings, a Coaching Inn Arch from Scale Model Buildings . I have to say, it was definitely not as user-friendly as the Petite Properties kits. With those, because they're built with notches and tabs that go together, you can almost figure out how to assemble without the instructions. Yet the instructions are still super detailed, so all in all it goes together easily (even if you are kit-bashing like me!). With this one, however, the front just did not make sense to me and the instructions did not show visually how it had to go. I ended up messaging them through their shop on Etsy and she was very helpful, actually taking down her model and showing me pictures of how it had gone together, and that was enough for me to figure it out...