Coffee Stick Houses – Part Three

First of all I would like to start by thanking all those who have posted encouraging comments on these blogs so far, and a special thanks to Alfrik and GReg’s links posted on the comments on part one of this series of posts – I’ll certainly be giving those techniques a try.

Ok, onwards, upwards and sideways with the town building.

Step 3 – Marking out

The next stage is to give myself a rough guide as to the exterior design. This is to mark out where supporting beams are going to go and where I’m going to have door and window frames.

 

Remember, this is a rough and ready town, nothing is perfectly symmetrical, so I’m not going to measure exactly where the sections are going to be – I’m just going to mark the beams on by judgement. If I decide that I don’t like how it has come out I mark over the top in a different colour pen – this is all going to be covered in the end so nobody else is going to see this preparation.

For scale when marking out doors and windows – the very quick rule of thumb I use is stand in your own doorway and see how much space is around you. Then using an average size figure mark out the door frame with the same gap. Window  frames should be at about waste height (ish) to the figures.

 

Once I’m relatively happy with the marking up then out comes the sticks, cutters and PVA glue. Time to get sticking.

Step 4 – Sticking on the frame work

 

The first sticks to be stuck on, are the main frame work – first of all the horizontal beams along the bottom and top around the whole of the building. Then inside these I stick the vertical support beams on the corners of the building and at the main support midway sections. All these pieces are stuck on double thickness to give the thicker beam shape.

Next go on the door and window frame pieces, again these are double thickness.  Then I start to fill in the horizontal wall panel pieces. These can be stuck on either flat edged or slightly over lapping to give either a tongue and groove, overlap or shiplap effect.

I noticed after the glue had dried that one of the panel pieces had been cut too short, no panic – I stuck a small piece of off cut wood over the gap, at an angle – and when finished off this will look like the original owner has patched up damage to the exterior. Again, this town has to have a used / lived in, and now abandoned feel and small areas of boarding up help give that impression.

I had some left over off cuts of foam board after this model was made and after some fiddling about with them I came up with this smaller building to go into the town. The key feature of this one is the hinged doors to the cellar. You’ll see more of this one later.