Under Construction!
My Grandparents, Bob and Theresa Smith, lived in a modest craftsman-style house in Pasadena when I was growing up. I have many fond memories of it, starting in the late 1950s, through the 1960s. The house was pretty special, in that it was at the corner of an intersection where the Pasadena's 2nd Division crossed. I recall watching Sante Fe trains go by throughout the day whenever we would visit. Here are a couple of photos I took of the house in the 80s, when it was being used for storage and in disrepair. It was taken down a few years after that.
A few years ago I bought a craftsman HO bungalow kit, from Timberline Scale Products, which was reviewed in the July 1997 issue of Model Railroader.
I had started building the kit to kind of look like my Grandparent's house, using paints that were similar to the colors I remembered. I would work on it a bit, and put it aside, and later work a bit more. I kept hitting "modelers block", and progress was extremely slow. Then, about half-way into the build, I dropped the model! Luckily there was minimal damage, but it kind of broke into a few pieces and had to be reconstructed.
Timberline Scale Product Bungalow Model
I had started building the kit to kind of look like my Grandparent's house, using paints that were similar to the colors I remembered. I would work on it a bit, and put it aside, and later work a bit more. I kept hitting "modelers block", and progress was extremely slow. Then, about half-way into the build, I dropped the model! Luckily there was minimal damage, but it kind of broke into a few pieces and had to be reconstructed.
But the accident turned into a blessing, because as I studied how to repair it, I realized that with some kitbashing, I could turn model into an even better representation of the actual house. I would use some old family photographs I had, that showed parts of the house in the background, such as this one with me (rear-left in the orange sweater) with my cousins, taken in front of the house.
With My Cousins In front Of Grandpa's House In Pasadena (Circa Late 60's)
The modifications involved changing the front porch and its roof, the right side extension, and the chimney location. In more detail:
- Cut off the porch at the right side of the steps, and move the right pillar to to butt against the stairs.
- Modify the overhang for the porch to be A-shaped, with the roof slopes to the right and left, rather than sloping down the front.
- Remove the front-facing attic dormer as part of this.
- Change the walls on the right side to modify the L-shaped extension, and to modify window locations.
- Move the chimney from the left side of the house to the right.
- Add a rear screened-in patio.
The following sketch shows how the plaster front porch, and the house layout, were altered. Following this plan, I cut the front wall into two pieces A and B, then used B to lengthen the right side extension.
Figure 1: Front Porch And Right Side Extension Alterations (before and after)
The sketches below further illustrate the changes. The parts in brown were removed (or replaced), and the new components in are shown in green. (I made these sketches after the model was built to help describe the changes.
Figure3 2: Top - Before, With Elements To Be Removed Or Moved In Green
Bottom - After, With Elements Added In Brown
The following sketch is the original I made to conceptualize the changes in the roof geometry. I used math to determine the dimensions of the pieces of styrene sheet I'd need to construct the roof: the letters in the sketch are the various lengths used in the calculations. I'm not good at accurate drawings, and had difficulty visualizing the roof lines and geometry, so the sketch is pretty funky. But it did the job for getting the roof section sizes and angles right. Thanks, math!
Figure 3: Sketches And Notes For Roof Dimensions And Angles
I continued to follow the kit instructions, deviating as needed when the cutting the modified wall and roof sections to match my changes. The seam from using the wall section B (see sketch above) to lengthen the side extension would later be camouflaged by planting a bush in front of it.
I hit modeler's block along the way, when it came time to glue on the plastic window "glass" and curtains, because I'd already assembled the walls, and now had to try to attach the glass and curtain material to the vertical wall assemblies. Also, the glued walls were not quite straight and square, which was depressing. The model sat on the workbench for a few months, when as mentioned before, I accidentally bumped it and it fell to the floor, breaking loose one of the walls! Another few months went by, but then I continued the build, and it was actually not too hard now with the wall separated to finish the windows and rectify the aforementioned alignment problems.
I changed how the roof was built from the kit's method. I wanted to match my grandpa's roof using the medium gray shingle roofing from Micro-Mark. I used .010" styrene sheets to form the roof, using the "score/snap/sort/assemble" techniques I'd seen from Model Railroader articles (for example, "How to scratch build styrene structures in 7 simple steps, by Paul Dolkos, May 2013). The roofing was initially built using the original design. It went well, but after building up the roof and doing some test fitting, I realized I could alter the section over the front porch to more accurately represent the original house. Thus were the roof sketches created (see figure 3 above), to calculate out the dimensions and angles of the new styrene section needed. For the porch roof, the use of the .010" styrene proved too look thicker than I cared for, so instead I used the Micro-Mark material only, reinforced with small styrene pieces that would be hidden from view. This looked fine. For the rear dormer, I used type-writer paper for the underlayer with the Micro-Mark material glued to it.
I used Walther's Goo to glue some of the dissimilar materials. Worked great. I also used it to attach the dormer walls together.
I used the pre-printed curtains provided in the kit for the windows. I tried to color the curtains using crayons and colored pencils. I wasn't really satisfied with the result, but when my son saw the model on the workbench, one of his comments was "curtains!", so I realized they actually looked fine. I did redo them, by scanning them and then using the computer to apply coloring and some heavier shadowing. I now am satisfied they are "good enough".
The model had many rafters showing under the eaves, but my grandpa's house had fascia boards instead, so I used strip wood to model these rather than the exposed rafters. It was nice not to have to cut all the rafters and glue them to the underside of the roof. (It was after I built this model that I was introduced to the wonderful NWSL Chopper). I cut a "V" shaped piece of basswood for the porch overhang front face, which added some strengthening to the porch roof assembly. I'd wanted to add some more changes to make the front match more closely the old photo with my cousins, including the horizontal support beam and the rafters protruding above it, but I ran out of steam and left the face plain.
For the rear screened patio, I drew up a simple plan and built the patio using strip wood. I used individual boards for the wall sidings, and blue masking tape painted black with a gray wash to simulate a tar paper roof. I made the screen material from tea-bags, colored with marking pen, which turned out darker than I like, and I'll use a much lighter color for future projects. Lipton bags didn't work for this, and I had to buy a more expensive brand with bags that look like a little tent instead. The screen door came from LaserKit, which includes screen material already cut to size which was nice.
My Grandpa's house had a basement access in back. I modeled this by carving a piece of balsa wood and applying wood sidings for the sides. I used Campbell's corrugated metal, weathered with etchant, for the top.
For the rear patio steps, I tried using Google Sketchup to create a plan. For such a simple structure, this was harder than I expected it to be, and then I found out that print out plan views can't be printed from it. This was disappointing because I'd hoped to use it for more complicated projects in the future.
The rear steps for the enclosed patio were build up as three stacked decks. The bottom deck was constructed as follows:
Figure 4: Rear Steps Construction
The other two decks were the same, except with one step removed, so that the top was a deck with three 1"x10"s. 1"x4"s were used for the fronts. After building the three decks I glued one on top of the other to get the final steps.
I built the railing up from 2"x4" and 4"x4" styrene strips. The NWSL Chopper was used to cut up the various pieces. I drew a side-view diagram, and used double-sided tape to fix the pieces over it, then used styrene cement to glue them together. After a bit I gently lifted the assembly from the tape; the pieces bent but stayed together, and after the glue dried completely, were in the desired shapes.
To align the railing, I used an ad-hoc jig for checking the horizontal, using a t-square and a couple of magnets.
Ad-Hoc Jig To Check Railing Horizontal
I used canopy glue to fix the rear post to the building. After it had dried, I made the small adjustments necessary for the step posts and used super-glue to glue them to the steps. Finally, I used super-glue on the rear post to make sure it was securely fastened to the building.
TBD - final photos
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