First Polish village house

Since I only have some paper Russian buildings for my fledgling early WWII FoW in 1/72 plastics, I decided to mark a start with some Polish scenery.

I came across this 1916 pic of a Polish hovel, and figured it would b a good start.

That resulted in this first paper mock-ip, not very good, but gave me a feel of the project.

After making some structural changes, and fiddling the dimensions a bit, that led to this styrene base model.

As usual, a lot of coffee stirrers met with an untimely end.

All the cladding done.

The chimney was donated by the Jacksonville, Florida, Best Western, where they had the odd idea it was a pen.

I noticed that many Eastern European houses have a layered-looking thatch, so I did that with slightly overlapping strips of towel, hoping it would come out well in the color wash. As you can see, I also primed the woodwork.

And the final result. I'm quite pleased with it, good start for a village, I think. Easy project, took less than a week to do, bit of time every evening.

Medieval/fantasy village completed

So this is what has kept me occupied, off and on, for the past five months or so: my fantasy/Medieval hamlet: inn. houses in all price ranges, and of course the sheep cote. The construction of most structures is described elsewhere on this blog.

Fun project, and I hope you liked seeing me muddle along. I also hope you saw how easy this is to do, and that it inspires some of you to do your own project.

Medieval/fantasy inn

As a focal point for my Medieval/fantasy hamlet, I built an inn.

In the rural parts of the Netherlands I've lived in, inns were not what we would understand as an inn now, but more like a working farm with facilities for weary travelers.

An example of such an extended farm can still be seen in the railway station coffee house in nearby Scheemda:

Since having a fire in a thatched building was not very advisable, farms had a separate cooking/baking house, close but not attached to the main house.

First attempt at the front of the building.

I found it a tad too low, so automatically it also got wider.

The barn part was added.

And the whole thing under one roof.

Had to disassemble the front of the building to add structure and details. Several coffee stirrers were sacrificed.

In the meantime, the basic construction of the cook house was done.

If you're wondering about the low top floor side windows, that is a common Northern Dutch 19th - early 20th Century feature, which I think would also go well with my Medievialized version.

Walls daubed (sand in wet paint) and the woodwork primed.

You may have noticed the sudden appearance of two small a-frame houses. Last month we had a heatwave, way too hot to paint, so I decided to add a few A-frames - you can never have too many A-frames.

Brown wash for the walls.

Everything reassembled, cook house done.

Yet another innocent towel slaughtered to make thatch.

And the final result.

The sign was made with the aid of some jewelry findings.

In the Netherlands, perhaps elsewhere as well, a swan sign was a code telling travelers that they didn't need to be cold or lonely during the long dark night.

The roof is darker than the flash makes it look.

This is the largest building I've done in this style It took me about a month, working an hour or so most evenings, and I think it's well worth it.