Summer of Scenery: Warhammer Cottage

Photo from the original White Dwarf article. As if mine's going to look as good as this.

Dave over at Wargames Terrain Workshop has another challenge: make a piece of scenery or terrain. The challenge lasts through to the end of August, so I figured even I should be able to bang out something by then. I've chosen a project that I've wanted to make for ages and is a blast from the past: the Warhammer Fantasy Cottage, which first appeared in White Dwarf in 1990.

Before I go any further, I want to give a shout to Mark and Nicholas from Sowing Dragon's Teeth. Not only do they have an excellent tutorial on making the cottage, they were also kind enough to solve an issue I had and guide me as to the actual size of the model.

Here's the basic ingredients: foamboard, balsa wood, a couple of knives, pins, steel ruler, steel set square, glue, and the plans.

Straightaway I had a problem. The plans printed in White Dwarf are 75% actual size. The instructions say to photocopy the diagram (oh, the olden days!) and blow it up to 133% to make it full size. I just dumped the image into Photoshop, increased the image size to 133%... and then discovered that it wouldn't fit on the printer paper. Wait, what? I was stumped. Numbers are not my strong point, which is why Alicia does all our finances. I could not work out where I was going wrong. As the diagram I'm using is an image I found online, I started to wonder if it was larger than the original White Dwarf plans and by blowing it up I was making it too big.

After much puzzled swearing I emailed the chaps at Sowing Dragon's Teeth with my problem and asked them if they had any ideas. Mark responded with the obvious answer: I was trying to fit a diagram scaled for A4 paper onto US letter paper, which is wider but shorter. Ah. Head, meet desk. Nick also sent me the actual dimensions of his cottage, which helped give me a much better idea of its size. Many thanks to them for responding to a total stranger emailing out of the blue.

Unfortunately, A4 paper isn't really used over here in the States. If I was in the UK I could easily find a pad at a supermarket for the equivalent of $2, but even the huge Staples store near me doesn't sell it as there's no demand for it. You can get it on the Staples website, but it only comes in boxes of 500 sheets. So to the Amazon I go and shell out $8 for 50 sheets of A4 graph paper. Luckily, Alicia has Prime so I only had to wait a couple of days.

Once my A4 paper showed up I printed the plans and pinned them to the foamboard. The idea is to join the pinholes together to give you the outline of the walls.

First maths, now art. It's like being back in school with my two crappest subjects. Joining the dots was easy enough, but now it was time for the cutting.

Well that was a doddle. Foamboard is easy to cut, and thankfully I thought ahead and bought a box-cutter which sliced the board like... well, a sharp knife slicing through foamboard. Once I'd tidied up a couple of sections with my X-Acto knife I was happy with it. And as a bonus I still had all my fingers.

Construction begins. The wall on the left kept leaning out, so I used a bottle of paint to prop it up. Luckily I realised that superglue would just melt the foam so I used the tacky glue I normally use to stick sand to bases.

While I was waiting for the walls to dry I painted one of the lengths of balsa wood with Vallejo Chocolate Brown. Then I wondered about just gluing the wood on and painting it in situ, which is what other modellers have done. Then I thought that the pre-painted wood would be OK, but then I thought about just leaving it... why do I overthink stuff so much?

The other side wall is glued on, with the knife holding it down.

Here's how far I got. Phemorous is doing a bit of Slaanesh-style cottaging. At this point I stopped for the day, but I'm hoping to get more done soon, such as the wooden beams and the chimney, which I'm really not looking forward to. You might have noticed that the roof is missing. This is because I'm an idiot and forgot to cut it out, so at least I get to use a second sheet of my expensive A4 paper.

Part 2 is here.