Tall Thin House

 Over the Christmas holiday, I decided to start on a new project: a large house for my Mordheim/Frostgrave town. I had a card box that a mobile phone had come in, which was to be the starting point for the building.

First, I cut a chunk out of the box and sculpted bricks behind it with DAS clay, to represent a place where the plaster had fallen off, leaving the brickwork exposed.

Then, I made the lower floor. In keeping with these sorts of buildings, I made the lower floor out of "stone", using pieces from a Renedra castle wall kit that I cut up and stuck in the right shape.

I joined the long thin box to the "stone" base and undercoated it white. This formed the basic shape. The timbering was made with coffee stirrers. I added some steps and stone columns from an ancient (and superb) Warhammer house kit.

Time for a window. The protruding part of the window was made from cardboard. The windows on this house came from old Mordheim sprues that I got on ebay and some resin windows from Antenociti's Workshop. The door was made by Iron Gate Scenery.

That's a bit better! In painting this model, I found that the timbers needed a black undercoat, and the walls worked better with a white undercoat. It was easier to paint a lot of the parts before assembly. Normally, I much prefer to build a model in its entirety and then paint it, but doing this saved a lot of hassle.

It was time to add the roof. Plasticard was used for the two pointy bits, and the roof itself was made of squares of card stuck to thin card. It seemed a bit flimsy to start with, but once the PVA dried it was pretty solid.

I wanted something to go on the front and back of the house. I thought that, given its height, a clock would be cool. As it happened, I had some clock faces that I'd bought at a steampunk event about ten years ago. I got them out, found some old cogs and a curve-lipped Warmachine base that could function as the back of the clock.

Unfortunately, I wasn't very happy with the way they looked: the clock faces looked too modern and distinctly not-Warhammer. I asked a friend, who agreed, so I decided that something else was necessary.

So, I bought the "Temple Relics" set of Mantic scenery. I figured that I could use the pulpit as a balcony.

With a bit of cutting, I was able to trim the pulpit down to balcony-size. I stuck it onto the front of the building and added some dubious-looking supports and a door behind it. Now Juliet can come out to greet Romeo (and shoot at him). Actually, you can't fit a model up there, but it looks nice.

The chimney came from a pillar from the Nolzur's Marvellous Miniatures range, with some cut-up bits of sprue and a 40k chaos gun decoration on the top.

Then it was time for painting.

So there it is! The main thing I've learned from this is that the quality of the result is almost directly proportional to the amount of time you spend on it. Also, when you think you've finished, you haven't, and it's time to do some more detailing. 

Anyhow, it'll look good with the others. I'm glad that I didn't use the clocks, in the end.