Late Alterations

I've discovered at an irritatingly-late stage in the build that I didn't pay enough attention to my research photographs of the real building and I've had to do some retrospective hacking.

I came to appreciate that I hadn't cut two of the windows at the rear of the house the correct shape.

The one on the far left needed to be enlarged all-round and the one on the right needed to be a rectangular rather than square, and also shifted a mil or two to the right.

Fortunately, as I have written recently, styrene is a very forgiving material but it is very awkward indeed to try and cut holes with any degree of accuracy into an assembled box, especially one where the walls are 60" thick.

I think I have just about got away with it though.

Levelling Up

Life becomes a lot easier when you can get an asymmetric building like number 17 sitting level so once I'd got the porch area sorted out the next step was to add the basic foundations.

This is not as simple as just adding some extra styrene sheet to the bottom of the walls because you have to be careful that the whole house stays straight, level and continues to sit flat.

It's all too easy to end up with a building that leans or rocks on its foundations.

The job as become easier since I was given a new set square which is at least 10cm on its longest edge and so is very good for checking that the buildings are sitting perfectly perpendicular.

Putting In The Porch

One of the most challenging bits of building number 17 is fitting the front door and the small bin shed that extends to the side of it.

The door is tucked away at the back of a sort of covered walkway along the side of the house.

I ended up making a chicane shaped assembly to fit under there and also form the side of the shed.

It took a lot of careful working out and I was glad to have an undisturbed evening in which to tackle it.

So there it is in position including the slatted bin cupboard door at the far end.

There's still a lot of detailing to be done but that's the basics of this little feature sorted at least.

Lopsided

After a few days of graft now comes my favourite bit of making a building which is joining the walls together for the first time.

In the case of the Oberon Wood houses it's very a very intriguing moment because some of these houses are such an unconventional shape.

Number 17 is made up of two distinct sections on different levels lined by a long wall along the back.

First I put together the larger, upper section which contains most of the the accommodation.

Before adding on the other half, which includes the integral garage, I added an extra wall section on the inside to ensure that the front wall of the garage was fixed on square and level.

As you can see, at this stage the building is a very odd shape and sits rather lopsided at the moment.

There is also a big gap where the porch and the front entrance to the house will have to be added on, which is most likely my next task.

Windows In

I was pleased to get all the windows and doors added on in one evening session.

It helps that there are at least two completely blank walls and that the doors are relatively simple to do.

If you are puzzled that there are still a couple of blank spaces I should explain that one of them is going to have the bay window added on the front, and the hole which look like a doorway is an opening leading to a passageway / porch where you'll eventually find the front door.

I shall look forward to putting it together next.

Aperture Setting

Perhaps spurred on by the knowledge that it would the last time for a while the process of hacking the window holes out of the blank sides for the new house wasn't too tiresome.

With them all mixed up like this it may be hard for you to mentally assemble them into a building but these are all the basic components for number 17.

There has been the need for a little improvisation during the process with a few of the holes being expanded or even moved.

How do you move a hole in a big sheet of styrene?

Well, quite simply, in fact, because of the forgiving nature of the material.

The long gallery window was one of those I miscalculated (or cocked up) at the first attempt.

When I offered it up to one of the end pieces with the sloping roof line it became clear that the sill was set much too low, and indeed would be below the slates.

The solution was to slice a long thin chunk away from the the top and bond it on at the bottom.

As long as it's a reasonable fit, if you treat it to a generous dousing of solvent it will melt into place nicely and with some scraping with the scalpel blade or attention from the file you'll hardly see the join.

Shape Puzzle

I started work on house number 17 the other night.

It's not the 17th house I've built - although it feels like it sometimes - that's just its street number.

I didn't actually get that far. After around an hour and a half all I had managed to achieve was to get the basic wall blanks cut out.

The reason is it that I spent quite a lot of time trying to puzzle out how the house all fits together.

It's an usual shape and complicated but the fact that not only is it on two levels and the ground around it slopes, it is also attached to the house to its right but sits a little lower.

This is one of the sketches from the Artistic Director that I'm working from.

Because of these complicating factors I decided the best thing to do was cut out all the walls at this stage so I can be sure that they will all fit together properly rather than cutting out pieces one at a time and finishing them off with window and door details before moving onto the next one.

That's the theory anyway...