I started a new project recently, this to build a few glitter houses modelled after homes around the neighborhood. It's an interesting mish-mash of styles and eras, but many of considerable interest. I like the ones from the 1920-1940 years, as those will work well with a loop of toy trains. Anyway, started off with a "four-square", a pretty common style that originated around the turn-of-the-century (19th) and continued through the 1930s. There are at least a half-dozen of them on my block, so a good place to begin.
The first step was building a cardstock mock-up. The roof is fairly straightforward, except for the dormer that is built out from the front. Some houses of this style have dormers on each side, but the one I chose to model has just the one. Using a mock-up was critical, as the old high-school geometry skills ain't what they used to be and a bit of fudging was required to get the complexities of the roof sorted. A few cuts, recuts, some trimming, and we finally had something that would work:
Once the roof was assembled, I could begin cutting the sides using some matt board I had left from earlier projects. I used the photo to come up with window/door placement. I also incorporated the base for the front porch:
After adding some interior bracing and papering a few of the exposed edges/corners, I started working on the porch roof. I'd like to tell you that it was all an exercise using pencil, paper, compass, and protractor, but that would be baloney...it was a total fudge-job. I'd be embarrassed to describe it; just know I started with some rough dimensions, cut the front bit, than a pair of sides that I trimmed and retrimmed until I got the angles close to what I wanted. I cemented a piece across the back, then glued it to the front of the structure, adding the columns afterwards:
At this point, I reached out to Howard for some recommendations on final assembly. It will need to be painted and glittered before the windows go in, so interior access is an issue. I think we decided on painting the roof, the structure, and the base separately. Then I'll glue the roof and wall structure and glitter the combination together. The base gets glittered separately, then the window glazing goes in. The last step will be to glue the house to the base. Better ideas, let me know.
Working on the base now, plus adding a bit more interior bracing to the house to try to minimize warpage during painting.
More soon...
