Shed Wars: Time Gentlemen Please - A Very British Pub

Having taken a few weeks off from Terrain building (I have been painting figures) I finally finished off the Church and Lichgate and turned my attention to some gates and stiles.

What the blog hasn’t shown is the mini production line going on some more typical English buildings – these in no particular order are the station, the post office, a small general store and of course the most important of British institutions the pub.

The basis of all these buildings are mdf kits and as I describe the builds I’ll give right and proper attention to the purveyors of such pieces.

However the one thing I don’t like about the MDF kits is the finish so I have elected to render all of mine which is typical of this period. I myself live in a 1930’s Art Deco style semi-detached house complete with flat roof and white render. Who knows maybe I’ll build this in 28mm?

The render effect is very simple – just coat the exterior of the building in pva glue then cover in sand or fine ballast. A top coat of white, cream or very muted colours (pink, light green, or yellow) acts as the finish.

This is the dolls house from Petite Properties rendered

With a cream paint job

The post office and general store - these are coming very soon

Once this is all dry file smooth the window and door appertures which may have become encrusted with glue and paint.

The focus of this post is the pub – the basic kit was procured from Warbases in the VBCW range. It comes complete with an outbuilding and a yard – more on this shortly. The building retails for around £16 and is perfect for 28mm

You can find this kit here

http://war-bases.co.uk/BUILDINGS/VBCW-28MM?product_id=160

The building was assembled using the render technique discussed above. The windows and doors themselves are on a separate mdf sheet that slides in behind the front of the building. I painted the doors and windows gloss black.

English Pub windows sometimes have a frosted affect downstairs so to emulate this I found an old file with an opaque finish. The window panes were cut out and superglued to the reverse side of the window frames. I used clear acetate for the upstairs windows.

These panels were then glued into the building.

The roof is a very simple affair two sheets of mdf and some triangular brackets. These were ‘tiled’ using some excellent precut roofing sheets from jimbibbly’s Oshiro Model range. These certainly take away the pain of individual tile cutting and once painted look the business. This building used just over one A4 sheet.

You can source these here

http://www.oshiromodelterrain.co.uk/victorianbuildings.html

The roof was given a black paint job then drybrushed grey to tie into the other slate roves on show. I have tried to do red tiling but I am not happy with the results.

My only gripe with this kit is its boxy form. So rather than use the outhouse inside the back yard I stuck this onto the outside of the building and then cut the yard walls to fit. This has the added advantage of creating a gap in the wall for a new gate. The posts for the gate are old bits of dowling glued into place.

The back yard walls were glued into place onto a sheet of ply and then rendered the same as the walls of the pub.

I was in two minds as to whether or not this should then be lawned or paved, in the end I decided that the paved area would be more appropriate. (cardboard squares glued down like paving slabs). The front of the pub was then paved with the design I’ll be using for all future pavements. These paved areas were painted black and then drybrushed greys with a final brush of brown to dirty then up.

The building itself is not going to be stuck on the board (storage reasons) but fits in the area uncovered by paving.

I have given it a light ink inkwash to dirty up the render.

Warbases are really generous and offer their customers a choice of three etched front signs – the Black Bull, the White Horse, and the Red Lion. In keeping with the black and white thematic of the building I decided on the first of these names. The sign was first washed black then given a coat of gloss plack paint. The letters were then picked out in gold.