Hey Phil, you're right actually. I tried looking for ways to build the dormer (the one with the window), but couldn't find anything. Thanks for any help! And no, I don't feel better. I'm gonna try to cram for this test and hope for the best haha.
I'll post some birdseye photos of the dio once the buildings start coming together more.

Nice work on the dio! I like your work area too, wish mine was as clean and well organized. Keep up the good work .

Pat.

looks great brandi!

Nice work!!!!

I also live in Missouri but near Springfield. The model club I am in is having a model contest in Branson, Missouri on October 22nd. If interested, let me know!!!
Michael

Hi Guys!!! Thanks for all the responses!! Mike-I don't think I can make it do to school, but thanks for the information!
Stan-I appreciate it.
Pat-Thanks a lot! Ha, I just cleaned the work area, it was a mess!

Here's the update:
I made lots of progress the last couple of days. I started laying out the plan on the styrofoam and worked on the buildings.
Here we go!

This is the blue stuff I'm using:


It's the thicker stuff just to make sure everything holds up. I can also dig down into it a bit for the ditches on the side of the axis road E Co is coming up into Carentan


Here's the plan taped to the blue stuff so I can make the marks with the blade and take a Sharpie to it to create the lines


With the Sharpie lines from the layout, just the basics:


Here's the start of the furniture store. I got all the glass in all 3 buildings today, finally! Feels good to be that far done, now! I hate making windows!!!!



Here's the bricks glued onto the destroyed house. I went ahead and glued them back on because the contrast in texture will be greater, and there's less of a chance of me getting gesso all over the place and covering up the brick work


The rear of the destroyed house before weathering:


Here's a better shot of the destroyed house..I have put on the back wall, but it's not in this shot:


Here's a window of the Cafe installed:


And now all 3 of the buildings together...the destroyed house ins't actually crooked, it's drying and has some pins underneath:


That's what I got done..today was a great day as far as progress on these buildings goes. I feel like I can finally start to see the light! I need to practice putting on gesso in an even manner before putting it on these buildings, I don't want to have to redo any more of them!
I still need to work on the interiors of the Cafe now and the furniture shop. And of course, start building some furniture!

Thanks for watching! I'll be at it all this weekend and I can't wait!

Feels good to be that far done, now! I hate making windows!!!!,, well i got some bad news for ya Brandi .. you gotta make another one for your dormer lol .. and heres now you make one .( done this on real houses this will be easier )
OK here we go ... first off you take your roof ,,oh by the way a dormer does not have to be above another window ..its just a way to give some extra light and room to a attic ... ok this is annoying but what you do is take two rulers , holding one as straight up as possible at the front of the roof near where the gutter is ..you measure about half an inch from the gutter ..that will be where the bottom of the dormer will start.draw a straight line to give you the cut line ..the length of cut will be the same as the windows you have already made in the building .its just easier that way..ok back to the ruler thingy ..holding the ruler straight up at 90 degrees ,then take ruler 2 ..or anything dead straight ,and aline that so its at 90 degrees to the roof ..making a triangle with the 2 rulers and the roof ..now mark on the roof with your sharpie ,,that will be cut line number 2 .once you cut the out that will be where your hold will be for your dormer ..then transfer those measurements to thin plastic sheet or wood and make your triangle ..times two .those will be the out side of your dormer ..you can build the inner frame straight onto the triangles to make life easier then glue those to the roof .brace it top and bottom and half way along,,thats the framing for the truses which form the roof .now making the roof is pretty straight forward ..its like building a little roof ..if need br i'll build you one and take pics of it all ..pics always helped my butt figure stuff out
I hope this will give you a good starting point for your dormer ;

Phill

Phil, thanks for that! I'll give it a shot this weekend. If something doesn't make sense as I work on the dormer, I'll ask you for your help again thanks a lot!
Also, the books you recommended are fantastic. I'm enjoying them very much!
I was going to start painting today, but ran out of energy. Hope to be feeling better this weekend and get some kits ordered!

Hey you and your most welcome ..its my pleasure ..great pics of your dio ..now i have a really good idea of whats going on and i like what i am seeing ..this is going to be a goodin thats for sure
Ain;t they ? so much info and pics in those books and hours of just looking ..ok i did and i wasn't even looking for anything untill i found one book on German half tracks ..freaking love those things
Ya need any help all ya gotta do is holla ..i'll sort you out

Phill

Hi Phil! How's the build coming?
Thanks for all the compliment! I finally got the correct adapter, thanks to someone answering my noob question about it, hehe. Watching some YouTube videos now, which is a great idea, cause I have zero clue on airbrushing ha.
I'll probably work more on the buildings today and order some figs. I really am making some progress on them, I need to start working on building the furniture. That will be fun, I think
Good news is, I still don't feel well so I've missed like a week of school haha which means more time for diorama building. Bad news, midterms are coming fast and I won't have as much time. But I am very excited about where this is going!
Thanks for reading!

very cool wanting to see these figures your build is goin on good i am watchin this with excitement

Hey Brandi .. ya your making some great head way on your dio ,,i'll be attacking some figures and the Bailey bridge tonight ,,gotta add some more planking to it ..as for air brushing lol ,ohh babe thats a nightmare when you first start but it dont take long ,,when i started using mine ( i've got 6 of them ..4 are crap lol ) i seriously sucked but thats to be expected ..now i still suck but not as much painting real cars helped alot there .now of course you have you tube and plenty of DVD's out there for help ..makes life so sweet them huh lol
Can't wait to see your tables and chairs


Phill

Curtis-I'm waiting to get all the figs in so I can figure out where each one goes and how many to actually make. Once I get them all in the next few weeks, I'll be putting them together and painting them. I did get a nice one together and he was my first mod on plastic...I melted his hand a bit, so gonna chop it off and give him a new one lol.
Phil, I suck, too hehe. I'm getting some Tamiya paints tomorrow to work with my airbrush, tried mixing Vallejo model color and it was terrible...hard to thin for my noob self!
Quick question...if I'm supposed to airbrush at like 40psi, is that the pressure that I use when the airbrush is on? I notice the gauge goes down quite a bit when the brush is used...or do I just put the gauge at 40 psi and just use it at that? It goes down to like 20psi though....
Anyway, I got some more work done on the destroyed house tonight. Here's the photo update:

I got the DAS glued on and while it was wet, molded it to look like ripped up stonework on the walls that got destroyed from heavy artillery:



Then I taped off the window frames and door frame and started applying the gesso:





I painted the gesso on with a crappy brush and then smoothed it out with a putty knife (palette knife) to make it look like plaster. I'll be putting a few coats on to build up over the brick work.


I added a chimney/fireplace (half destroyed of course!) as well as relaized that a one room house makes no sense...so I was able to correct my mistake:


Here's my little dude:


And, for no good reason, I randomly decided to start into building a Tamiya Tiger! I've have laying around forever. I've been reading about armor and modelling it, so I think that played a role. I have my next few dio ideas in my head already, and the next one does not include any buildings!!! Ha.


And for no other reason than to show him off, here's the little kitten with one eyeball that we just adopted about a month ago! He loves hanging out with me in the craft room haha


That's it! I'll have more over the weekend since there's no homework or tests or papers due next week, yay!

Really enjoying this build of yours .. its great work you've done so far and the buildings are starting to look very very cool
As to the amount of pressure for your air brush to high and it will be like a water blaster with the paint ..if your compressor as a adjustment for the air pressure then adjust it down ,,40psi is way high ,,20 psi is much better ..for general spraying of large areas 40 is ok ,,its like spraying a large vehicle ,,its just point and spray but when your spraying cammo then you need alot less pressure ,,then its soft paint coming out of the brush not a blast ..much better for painting with ,,my first compressor didnt have that pressure adjustment so i used the valve from a fish tank to open up the air line a bit to let the air out so i had less pressure for the brush ..worked too .
The Tamiya paint is great stuff for thinning ..play around abit with the thinning .it wont take long to find the right mix ,,the paint should flow smooth and have solid colour .to thin and its spraying water and its terrible .to thick and it wont spray ..easy huh ? lol also help with the adjustment of the needle on the brush .pull it back to much and you get a lot of air ..close it to much and it blokes it ..again play with which setting works best for the paint your spraying .takes time but the results are worth it ..nothing feels better than looking at a model you sprayed and the paint is flat and solid and it looks brilliant
Oh and welcome to the wonderful world of armour easy model to bang together that one ,,still got my one from many years ago ..you'll enjoy this .
That little sniper puddie cat is a cutey lol

Great progress!!! Really like these houses, looking forward to seeing those figures painted!!

Regards,

Phil, I didn't know that was too high lol. That might explain the puttering of the paint! It came out really blotchy. But it could have been the paint was too thick, too, I don't know.
And thanks! I am very happy with how the buildings are turning out. I have never tried to DAS bricking thing before, but I saw it on a build log around here...the guy that used it did an incredible job on his build.
As far as the Tiger goes, it looks fairly straightforward. The directions are a lot easier to read than the Tiger from Dragon I have, and that kit has A TON of parts, I was like WHOA when I opened it and then put it all back in the box and stuck it in the closet out of fear, haha! The Dragon kit is nice, though, it came with Zimmerit and tons of PE parts, too. The only thing I'd need for it would be some tracks if I were serious about it. That one will be a good time. This Tamiya Tiger will be fairly easy and I'm not too worried about accuracy with it. It's just something to do a little of while I'm waiting on things to dry, or if I'm feeling a little burned out with this dio.
"Sniper kitty" LOL!!!! He really is.

Vlad-Thanks a lot! Some more figs will be on order today, and I don't think I'll need more than that, I don't want to overpopulate the scene. Got my hands on some nice Airborne kits finally and Historex Agents actually has all the Nemrod para kits I was looking for at a decent price. No idea how much the shipping will be though.

Got a couple more kits off Ebay, too so when they arrive, I'll post some photos. Probably won't have all of them til late October, though, shipping from UK and stuff, so we'll see.

Anyway, thanks for reading!

Brandi yup paint thats too thick will come out just like that ..blotchy as hell ,,thats just down to thinning ..you'll get it ..if your pressure is to low with thick paint it won't spray at all ..heres a trick i used to figure out this stuff ..i made the paint too thin ..test sprayed it and then added small amounts of paint to the mix to slightly thicken it ,,after a couple more times it was prefect ..then i just had to remember that lol
Now to the tanks the Tamiya Tiger is a sweet little number ..easy to build and no problem with fitting of parts ,,the Dargon kinda falls into the same department but ,, lol ,,as you seen ..that amount of parts are scarey and the plans can be unclear ,,i've got quite a few Tigers now ,Dargon,,AFV Club ..Tamiya and Italeri ..oh just picked the Dragon Panzer 4 Ausf E 3n1 ,,there's over 1000 parts in that ,now for something that will scare ya .. Dragon Porsche Hunting Tiger .. nearly 600 parts in that kit are for the tracks alone lol if i remember right there's nearly 1000 parts in that one too
Now since your a newbie lol a very nice and easy replacement set of tracks are AFV clubs ones ..Friulmodel tracks are awsome but alot more work and metal ..you need drills and bits for those ones but the AFV Clubs one don't and they cheap ..you might need to make some spacers for the drive sprockets on the tank but don't quote me on that
Oh get a replacement gun barrel too .. RB Models or LionMac make beauitful alloy barrels and they are cheap too and really look the business,,you'll love the result
And ya sniper kitty ..one eyed so he's always on target and black ..owns the night lol
Keep up the great work hun ,,this is looking sweet

Phill

Yo Brandi,

Good update on your work.

I keep following.

Greetz Nico

Phil, thanks!
Nico, thanks for following!

Here's a small update...been busy with school so not as much time to work on the dio as I would like, but I have been working on it here and there:

I started working on some furniture. My first ever dresser:


and my first ever dining table...which may not be historically accurate...I need to do some digging to see what the style was back in the 40s in European furniture:


And I had a hard time deciding on the color for the destroyed house, which is coming along quite nicely:


I decided on the more yellow of the lighter shades on the bottom:



This is just one coat of drybrush. I'll be adding in more coats and wetter coats as it dries up.



And I started on the paratroopers I got in. Here's a look at the 1st of them coming together with some putty to fill in the gaps:


Still need to file him down a bit more. I really think I'm going to wait to get my order in from Historex Agents before I start in on the figs. I really need to know which of them I'll be using, how many I'll need to modify and wouldn't mind only mixing colors a couple times for a batch of figures instead of doing one here and there.

Also, totally out of left field....I went to the hobby shop today to pick up some more wood and some paints and found this for 40 bucks (US) and couldn't pass it up!

Did a quick check before getting it, but it seems like the reviews are good and it was 20 bucks off...had to get it!!! Can't wait to dig in!

Thanks for following! Sorry for the delays, but it's midterms so everything is really hectic right now. Fall break will be a nice vacation to model!

I don't know if it needs a lot of courage or plenty of room to build a diorama of this size.
This work is amazing.
I particularly like to see my models in an environment. I love dioramas and don't like to seeing only the model.
But if I build a diorama of this size, I have to leave the house ..... kkkkkk.
Congratulations! I'm loving everything I see. I will continue to monitor this topic.

Regards,
Rodrigo

Hey Brandi .. am liking your furniture in a big way ,,hell thats some nice work there ,,and i am seriously jealous of ya too .. getting that Stug for $20 ,,i would never see that here and its a wonderful little kit but watch out ..its got those fun tracks lol
Really nice progress on your dio and great work on those figures ..gotta start mine soon ..need them built for placement tests ..but now the tracks are here so its time for tank building

Phill

Hi guys! Thanks for all the comments.
Just wanted to let you know that this project isn't dead, I just don't have the time right now to work on it for hours and hours, so I'm doing a little when I can here and there. I wanted to tell you not to expect a real update until the end of the year (probably end of November at the soonest) just because school and other obligations have pulled me away from this for a while.
Thanks for keeping in tune!!!

I have a small update of what I have been up to...I have yet to start the figs, wanted to get these buildings done first to make it easier to tell the story with the figs and work out the details there. I am also still waiting on a kit from the UK that got lost in the mail...they sent a replacement, hope this one makes it!
I recently was introduced to a new way to make buildings (thanks to Phill) and I'm trying that out as we speak, waiting for the plaster to dry.
I'll show the older pics of the building I am re-doing (the music shoppe) anyway, just to give you an idea.
Here we go!
Here's a fig that I started converting. I used DAS for his leg and still need to finish it up:


Here's the old music shoppe interior getting some paint and wallpaper:


And here's the inside together:


Here's the new music shoppe being built. The frame is balsa wood. I drew the building's walls onto white trace paper, then taped it down. I then took a giant sheet of clear plastic (it came with a poster frame...same frame I am going to use to line the dio once it's done) and taped it down on top of the trace so I could get all the wood framing just right. Taped down the wood frame to the plastic and eventually took some white glue to the sides to keep it down so the plaster doesn't leak through.



Here's the frame will plaster poured in:


So far that's it. I'll be back with an update as I get more done!

Is it bad that I'm pretty much starting all over? :/

Hey Brandi and welcome back ,, like how the plaster work is going ..that wall will look very nice when done .. as for it being bad about starting all over ..nope ,,most of us out there have done it at least once when we not happy about something we are working on .god knows i've done it a few times ..if the end result is better than the present one ,,then its worth it

Phill

Hi guys! It feels good to be back at it a little bit after a long break. I am going to try to see if I can make a ton of progress over the next month or so.
I have decided I didn't like the foam buildings after the way the plaster ones turned out. I will keep the Cafe foam, but the destroyed building will be re-done in plaster. I will also plan better. I have found that doing each individual wall works better than putting it all together THEN trying to do the walls. I'll add in photos, wallpaper, paintings, scratches, all of it before I actually assemble the buildings this time. Also, the plaster buildings take a minute to get done, but I really love the end result and how easy it is to scribe in the details. A lifesaver!!!! (thanks again, Phill!)
Here's what they look like (before having to re-do the front wall because of cracks and messy resin windows):






Tomorrow, I should be able to get tons of work done while the girlfriend is at work and while I am home "sick"
I'll update tomorrow evening!

See see see didnt i tell ya that the plaster places are way cooler lol ..you doing a great job on those ..i was shocked when i saw them ..damn your doing some bloody nice work slightly jealous here ,,but only slightly

Phill