The Bunny Hutch

An obscure FR reference as a title for a blog post about a carriage, but I shall explain.

Himself's usually prodigious productivity has been curbed slightly in recent weeks, first by a sunshine holiday and then starting work on a luxury apartment for his granddaughter's guinea pigs.

He has been doing a little modelling, though, applying the first coats of paint to the latest Superbarn, 118.

(In case you were wondering, the Bunny Hutch title is a nod to the legendary sales kiosk on the FR - you can read more about it here.)

Gap Site

When I popped in on Himself at the weekend I had a chance to take a peek at how the penultimate house looks in its position on the layout.

This is the view from the public side of the layout which shows the back of the house.

At the moment it is sitting far too high and we'll have to take off the piece off plywood which is currently covering over the gap in the baseboard so the house can be sunk down to its proper level.

This is the view that the operators will see.

It won't be too much longer until the bungalow is finished and we can get this housing estate scene wrapped up, which will be very satisfying.

Bunglalow Building

So the easy bit has been done, the solid house bit of the bungalow is finished.

Since I last posted about it I have added all the finishing details like the chimney, the ridge tiles, the brick foundations and the guttering.

The last part of the build now is to fabricate the large conservatory which is attached to the left hand end of the back of the house.

Slates Sorted

Now the roofing slate sections are cut and fitted it definitely could not be mistaken for anything other than a bungalow.

The pieces on the lower half are perhaps the biggest I've had to cut on any of the Oberon Wood houses using the best part of a full Wills sheet each.

At the back you can see that I have also added the outhouse which made this piece the most challenging one to cut out.

(Truth be told, I did have to do it twice.)

There's not too much left to do on the main part of the house but that big conservatory is never far from my mind.

A Simple Box

I've spent the last couple of days completing the window and door details on the two main sides of the bungalow.

You'll notice that the house, like most others, is divided into two sections, at least as far as the roof profile is concerned, but at least this time is a basic, simple, straightforward box shape.

I've put on the window cills at this stage which will save me at least one item on the snagging list towards the end of the build.

Another feature which is worthy of note is how far inset the front door is, which makes this front section of the house rather more three dimensional than these usually are when I'm preparing them.

The next bit is the really exciting bit - gluing them together into a box.

You'll notice that I have now fixed the part with the stone cladding effect in place.

There are two intermediate walls to separate the roof heights.

This house could be completed in double-quick time were it not for the fact that it still needs a big conservatory added onto the back - or the front as the layout viewers will see it.

The Long House

Being a bungalow what you notice first about the pieces of this house - the last of the ones I'm building - is how long and thin the main front and back sections look.

You may be wondering why there's a huge rectangle cut out of the side of one of them it's because that is where the section with the stone cladding will go.

In the last post I described how I had set the windows much further back, and that is the reason for the cut out, so that the back of the windows can poke through the hole and it can fit neatly on top of the main section of the wall behind making it look like the stone cladding has been added to an existing wall.

I'll be taking particular care with this bungalow because I know progress will be monitored closely.

The owners have family links to the FR and they've come along and seen Bron Hebog when we've exhibited the layout in the goods shed at Dinas on a couple of occasions and taken a close interest in the development of the estate scene and I know they've been looking forward to seeing their house modelled.

I hope we can do it justice.

One Last Time

Finally, after a number of years, I'm onto the final house to complete the Oberon Woods estate scene.

This one is, architecturally speaking, the simplest of the buildings I've had to make, being 'just' a bungalow.

However there is always a catch and this house has two of them - a big conservatory at the back and some ornamental stone cladding on the front which I scribing by hand in my usual manner.

If you're thinking that those windows look wonky, you're right. They are meant to be.

With the stone cladding added to the walls it means that the window frames on this bit are set further back than on the rest of the building, which is rendered, so to represent that I've used 60 thou strip to build up the back of the window openings before adding the frame detail.

How this fits in with the rest of the building I will show you next time.