Terrain - Cottage

Refreshing old models - Cottage

The cottage you see here was scratch-built by me back in around the years 1992-1993 when I was in secondary school undertaking my Duke of Edinburgh Award Scheme. For my Silver badge I chose as my skill - Crafting; specifically table-top model scenery crafting (like you would have for model railways which is how I pitched it to my teachers, although I had to explain at length that I was not constructing model railways).

The cottage was constructed from the instructions and template as presented in the Modelling Workshop series in White Dwarf Magazine, issue 130. Issue 130 was released in 1990 and I still have the Modelling Workshop pages from this very magazine tucked in a folder somewhere.

Foamboard, balsa wood, cereal box cardboard, DAS modelling clay, wall filler and some Citadel Paints were all used in the construction of this piece. I was playing a lot of Warhammer Fantasy Battle at the time, so it was definitely a piece I could use on the table, and the cottage was something which I thought I could achieve in building to completion as one of the pieces to present for my Silver badge.

The cottage was at the time stuck to a bit of corrugated cardboard which was then painted green and flocked to give it that in-world appearance. I was never really happy with the base, but I needed to get the cottage complete and out of the way as I had other buildings I was in the middle of constructing for my Silver badge.

The cottage itself is now about 30 years old and has seen it's fair share of play and abuse. There was damage to the tiles especially on the corners, the corners of the chimney stack lintel and the chimney pot itself.

Rather than just touch up the piece to repair the damage, I decided to go full on and replace that base I had disliked since the beginning, as well as fully repair and repaint the model.

I began by ripping off the original base and then finding a suitable base to add the building back on to. I had acquired off cuts of some really thick card (about 4mm thick) a number of years ago. The building was a good fit to an off-cut I had allowing for some space around the building to add some detail in terms of foliage so I went with this.

Before fitting the cottage to the new base I had to repair some of the wooden laths which formed the bottom of the walls. The glue and paint I originally used had ripped off some layers of wood from the bottom leaving a gap. Once these were repaired the the building was stuck to the new base in preparation for the rest of the repair.

Thankfully there was not too much damage to the tiles which needed repair and so re-stuck those tiles which were loose, and where the corners were dog-eared and ragged I just cut these bits away.

The chimney pot and chimney stack lintel were replaced completely. The lintel was just another piece of thick card (the card you find at the back of a file pad) which was easy to restore. My original chimney pot was made from a single piece of DAS modelling putty. My new chimney was made from the pen barrels and plasticard.

Once assembled, everything which was added new was given a quick brush with watered down wall filler, to fill in any gaps and give a cohesive appearance to the original construction, before being painted black to match the original base colour. The entire building, base and all was given a brown wash to tie everything together before I got to repainting the piece.

I think the foliage and flock I added really helps to bring this piece to life and here's to playing with it for another 30 years!

I will leave you with some pictures of the final piece. Enjoy!

J