After my last post I've been working hard to fix the mess that my cat did to the row of cottages I had been building.
This last week. whilst the family has been extreme camping in Staffordshire I 've taken a bit of time to carry on with the row of cottages that my cat so very kindly gave me a kick up the backside to carry on with and having fixed up the end with some pvc pipe weld (very effective at gluing together foamex) I'd got to this stage:
The joints were the foamex had broken apart had married up very nicely indeed and with a bit of touching up were quite difficult to spot, so I was encouraged to continue.
The roof was pretty easy to fix and I thought I'd strengthen it with another piece of 1mm foamex on top of the one that was already there.
What I hadn't figured on was the glue reacting with the thinner materials and after a roof warping nightmare, where the two layers of laminated 1mm foamex turned into the waviest roof you've ever seen, after I'd individually tiled one side! Undaunted I ripped it all off again and replaced it with a piece of 2mm. I was able to rescue the tiled side as I'd glued them to a piece of paper preprinted with a 1mm grid for alignment, which was then fixed on with double sided tape, and this I was able to carefully peel off the piece of warped foamex. Of course, this then made the gable ends slightly higher which meant a bit of filling and patching, and whilst not perfect, I think it looks OK from a viewing distance.
Here's the new gable end
I could have glued barge boards on to hide the join, but I wanted to put on prototypical stone end capping, so I hope it comes across as badly weathered stonework ;)
The roof tiles I'm pretty pleased with, having stuck them on individually and being made from a lightly textured wallpaper we use at work for printing wallpaper graphics.
They were stuck on with pva and then given a coat of Humbrol Earth, before being washed over with a couple of coats of diluted Weathered Black and then dry brushed with Wilkinsons Safari Sand. They still need a bit of weathering up with some more black and perhaps gree, but I'm happy enough with them as they are now to leave it until I can get some materials to finish off the downpipes and door frames...
