Hello

I'm working on a small French city house for use in 1:35 skirmish wargaming. I intend to build a small village, and this house is the first one I am working on.

The door and the shutters are from Hansa, the rest is made out of balsa, plaster and wood.



I am a bit unsure of the roof, it looks the way it does because it was easy to build, but what kind of real-life roof does it look like, and what color should it be painted?



The tree is supposed to be burned, and will be painted to reflect this. Some planks will be added under the ceiling in the ground floror, and much more detail will be added in the garden. I intend to make a lot of debris inside the house as well, pieces of walls and roof etc.

Suggestions on how to improve it will be appreciated.

Nice job. Very well done so far.
I personally have never seen a roof that is made from planks such as this. That doesn't mean that they don't exist, it's just very new to me. If you wanted to make a more traditional type roof you could convert the planks to shingles. You can do this by etching in vertical grooves to represent individual shingles. Then give it a good dark wash to make the edges stand out.
The edges of the roof break are a bit smooth. I would rip them up a bit more. The shape if fine it just seems that where the boards break could be a bit more jaggid.
As a nice detail you could add a rain gutter and down spout with a rain barrel.
I know it's early, don't forget to add interior trim around the windows.

wow nice house, i like it very much.

Thanks for the ideas Slodder.

I suppose you were thinking of a roof like this:
http://www.staff.hum.ku.dk/asmus/krigsspil/roof.jpg

That should be relatively easy to do.
I'll make a rain gutter as well, the pipe going down could be used to cover one of the places where two walls join. Great idea!

Thanks, I'll post more pictures when it's closer to completion...

Any other ideas?

I was looking at the tree a bit more and the one broken branch near the bottom doesn't quite fit. If you look at the trees out your back window, i"m pretty sure you won't see a branch that big that low. I would cut it down to the base trunck and if you need 'dress up' the cut area you can either paint it, or dig it out a bit more and make it a recess or hollow spot in the tree.

Hi,

A realy nice work you've done here.

Well , where would you want to fit your village? Nomandy ? Britany ?...

This kind of roof is very usual, you know.
On your picture the roof is made with tile of slate and the color varies between very dark grey to medium grey.

Looks very nice!The destroyed look of the roof is really well done!Keep the pics coming!

Thanks for the comments.

-> Slodder: Good observation about the tree, I'll fix that.

-> Piwi: Probably Normandy, so it could be used both for games in 1940 and after D-day. Thanks for the info on the roof. So, in your opinion, it should just be painted dark grey, and not cut into smaller pieces?

Hopefully I'll be able to work on the house in the weekend, so more pictures will follow then...

No! You should !

Look here:

Great, thanks!!!

Hello Benjamin, the House looks great, but i have a suggestion for the tree. Maybe you could actually burn the tree, and save yourself the trouble of reproducing the looks of burned wood.

I am looking for a house similar like this for my ardennes diorama. Is that costum or can someone get me a link?

A small adjustment. Do not overlap the roof planks. Make them flat. Then shingle over them. The shingles need to be nailed to something.

> Verboten: Good idea, I think I'll burn it later...!

> TsunamiBomb: This one is homemade, but it was very easy to build, so save yourself the money for a kit. In my experience there's so much work to most plaster kits that you might as well build the whole thing yourself. I'll give you the measurements if you like...?

> ShermiesRule: I guess that would be the most realistic way to do it. I've just worked a bit on the roof tonight, trying to make shingles, but I must admit I am leaning towards the lazy solution of just keeping it the way it is and painting it dark grey...

Tonight I made wallpaper for the living room and the bedroom, and fixed the tree the way Slodder suggested it. When I've worked a bit more on it, I'll post some more pictures.