From the Warhammer Lake-town house interior to a fully scratch-built version

[PhilB]

A recent post here got me thinking about the Warhammer/Citadel Laketown House model again. I'd admired it when the first posts popped up here, with folks talking about it going sold out in hours from becoming available, and decided I had to have one or two for myself. I was also intrigued whether it could be built with a playable interior.
Here are the sprues:


Notice the two two-story building facades in the upper left corner. This was my first clue that this model wasn't intended to show off the interior. I couldn't build a detachable second story without whacking each of those pieces in half. So I did - vertically, just under the second floor overhang. It was a very fiddly cut, since I couldn't use my handy steel ruler to guide my hand. But it came out *fairly* straight:


Still, I thought, those smooth interior plastic walls with bulging sections corresponding to the outside windows and doors are not ideal to represent the interior layout, even with a lot of surface work. So I pulled out some cardstock calendars from my bank I'd been saving, measured three times and cut out some interior walls:


Also notice that the two second-story facades are double-sided, so no card was required for those walls. The two sides don't match, allowing those assembling multiple kits to add a little variety, but it does mean that the inside wall (and window) won't match the outside wall. Oh well.


So, prior to assembly, I prepared all the interior walls by scoring them and marking board ends, and also experimented on doing the inside of the second-story window (with mixed success - need to make a better effort next time). Mixing ochre, burnt umber, brown, white and black acrylics I got from a craft store (far cheaper than my usual Foundry paints), I tried to shoot for a heavily weathered interior and exterior, keeping the beams darker for contrast:


Finally, I'm quite happy with the bare interiors on both floors. Plus, as near as I can tell, I'm the first gamer to post online pics of the Lake-town house complete with interior!


Mind, this is still a work in progress. I haven't painted up the nets and other miscellaneous gear that is modelled on the building exterior and on the various other bits and bobs I haven't yet assembled. And I'm not sure I'm really happy with the weathered wood of the dock and platforms. Comparing it to real-life pics, it's far, far too dark to really represent weathered wood. I'm fairly happy with the dirty blue on most of the exterior walls, but still can't decide if I should redo all the docks and platforms in pale weathered wood.


Next step will be to do something with the interiors. Here's where you lads can help:
1) I noticed that the Lake-town folk must have been really, really cold! There's no fireplace on this house! So should I try to sculpt a fireplace and chimney from some leftover expanded polystyrene bits? Or cobble together some sort of cast-iron stove with a metal flue? Seems like the second choice would be a bit anachronistic, but I'm open to ideas.
2) I need to build either stairs or a ladder for access between floors. I'm thinking a narrow staircase built of cardstock (so as not to hog too much space in the already claustrophobically small interior) and a trapdoor on the second story.
3) Should I build removable or fixed furniture? I'm thinking most of it's got to be removable, because the interior is so small it's already going to be hard to place figures in combat.

At the end of the day, I'm wondering a bit whether it isn't wasted effort trying to build an interior on a  house this small. The spaces aren't really varied enough to make for interesting battle scenes. I suppose the interesting part for skirmish games is bound to be more with the platforms and docks *outside* the house.

I'll post final pics in a few days, once all the nets, fish and other details are done.

[Mad Lord Snapcase]

That is really great work, I will follow this with interest as I have three of these waiting to be built. I hadn't considered interiors but yours looks really good. As to a chimney..............?

[fred]

Nice work.

Docks - I'd just dry brush more lighter shades on top to lighten the colour.

Interiors - I like what you have done. I'd probably leave it as is - it gives you upstairs and downstairs as separate areas to game in. Which is probably sufficient for a small building. As for stairs, perhaps a trapdoor and ladder?

Fireplaces and chimneys - these really need to be brick, especially in a wooden house. A metal stove would be better, but not sure how well it fits in the LoTR world technology wise. Or perhaps Laketown is in a warm zone - houses in the Australia and NZ tend not to have fixed internal heating.

[PhilB]

Fireplaces and chimneys - these really need to be brick, especially in a wooden house. A metal stove would be better, but not sure how well it fits in the LoTR world technology wise. Or perhaps Laketown is in a warm zone - houses in the Australia and NZ tend not to have fixed internal heating.

Surely they'd at least need a cookstove of some sort. My ex-inlaws have a narrow 15th-century-vintage house inherited from some grandparents in a small village in central Auvergne (France) whose only heat source is a large cast-iron cooker on the first floor, that (kind of) heats the upper 3 floors through grilled floor vents. That might be a solution here, with a tubular chimney like Lord Snapcase's lovely example.

[fred]

A cook stove would be a good idea.

I would have a think about the balance between playability and realism - as generally the more you go to realism the longer it takes, and you can eventually end up making things less playable.

At the minute what you have looks good and looks very playable.

[nic-e]

Very nice.
May be the mantic dungeon scenery would be a good way to fill the house? A bookshelf and a table would really tie the room together

[PhilB]

A bookcase! A stove! A table! Thanks for all the great ideas.
So, here is the next installment of this project. I have scratchbuilt eight bits of furniture to fill the interior, but decided to leave them mobile so they can be moved or removed as necessary to place figures.



The bookcase, the stairway, the trap door, the large and small beds, the table and the chair were all built out of cardstock (old bank calendars). The stove is an inverted golf tee I found in my yard. The large bed's headpiece is a plastic handle from some pool supplies packaging. The bookcase was the most fiddly, since for the books I cut out dozens of tiny (3x4mm approx.) rectangles from card, then glued them together in groups of 5 or 6 before placing them on the bookshelves. This gave a satisfactorily uneven appearance, as if the books were of different sizes, or just haphazardly shelved. In the foreground of the above picture are all the bits and bobs that were actually included with the laketown house kit. I decided to mount them in groups on standard 25mm washer bases (tarted up to look like boards) rather than glue them to the house or the docks directly - so as to keep things more modular.



Here you can see the bed inside the first-floor interior, with its nice headboard. It's funny, I had stuck that bit of plastic in my pocket meaning to toss it in the trash... was my subconscious already telling me to use it on this project?



Here you can see the stairs a bit better. Notice the door under the stairs. Gotta have somewhere to keep annoying kids until they're ready to lean wizardry!



Here you cas see the bookcase and trap door a little better. I still can't decide if I should paste a flat black sheet of paper under the trap door to simulate the darkened depths below.



Here is the second stage of the house exterior, with an assortment of barrels, baskets and wicker fish traps, as well as a tavern sign cribbed from the internet and printed to the right size to be pasted in place before being doctored a bit (google = "tavern sign" <g>)

Next step will be adding an exterior chimney for the stove, a bit of moss & vegetation on the house, maybe doing something more with the interior walls. OR maybe just call it good enough, dullcoat it all and move on to the next project.

[Ogrob]

Absolutely lovely work!

[fred]

Very nice work on the furniture- really lifts the interior. Glad you ignored by leave it as is suggestion.

[Cherno]

Beautiful both on the ouside and inside!

[Sunjester]

Great stuff!

[PhilB]

Well, I'm giving the lake-town house a rest and moving on to an entirely scratch-built half-timbered house that I plan to use in the same village, as part of a swamp village.

This current project began after using a number of commercially-available 2D terrain tiles, some of which show house interiors. I thought, why not build the 3D portion of the house, based on what I'd learnt from the Lake-town house and from dozens of pictures of real and model half-timbered houses gleaned from google?



This is the floorplan I began with: a 5x5 shop interior with three rooms, on a one-inch grid to facilitate combat movement. I also thought that if I used the interior printed on paper, glued into the model, I could skip the laborious paintjob on the inside of the house. That meant I also needed to print up walls. So I looked for some nice half-timbered textures, some doors & windows, and prepared that as well, sizing everything to match.



So armed with a large bag of 3mm square basswood sticks picked up at the local craft store (Cultura) I began gluing theouter grid onto cardstock base, again from my stock of saved-up bank calendars. I tried to make the doors and windows of a size that matched the floorplan, but after looking at the finished result, I think the next house will need smaller doors & windows, if only not to dwarf the dimensions of my lovely Lake-town house kit.



After much gluing, measuring, cutting and careful size-matching, this is the result of the first-floor interior. I'm fairly pleased with the printed interior walls, and the lack of protruding interior beams is somewhat made up for by the 3D relief of the exterior. This picture shows the walls simply fitted in place, but the next step will be gluing them in place, as well as cutting out the interior doors, for more visual fun during gaming use. It's going to take me a few days to glue all those walls in place, since my supply of clamps is limited, so it'll be a few days before I show you pics of the next stage of construction.

I still haven't decided if I should make a half-inch or full inch cantelievered projection over the front door or not, as one sees on many extant half-timbered houses. I think a full square will look goofy, and even a half square (half inch) projection might be too much. Might be best to keep things toned down, and do say a quarter-inch projection, despite not getting any more real playable space from that on the second floor.

Any suggestions as I proceed?

[Iain]

Lovely stuff.  You did right to repaint the walkways etc - they looked good before but really outstanding now.

[Codsticker]

Beautiful! I love how you have painted the wood- very nicely done.

[PhilB]

Iain and Codsticker: from googled images of aged wood, I saw that it was almost invariably so lightly brow in was nearly pale grey. with an additional wash, the Lake-town house docks are closer to that than originally, but I think that's all the further I'm going to take it.

On to the scratch-building project!

The first floor is close to completion. I've glued in all the interior walls, slapped some paint on the outside, and it's starting to look like something.



I tried to simulate wood grain, but even my thinnest brush was far too fat for the job. I kept at it though, with some burnt umber craft paint, and the wood beams are starting to look better. Though I seem to have missed one or two.



The interior walls are very thin, but not jarringly so. the worn-out wattle and daub motif I printed on them seems a little too extreme, though. I'm wondering if I should paint over part of it with a plaster color, leaving only a few corners showing the wattle and daub... but not sure whether it's worth the effort.



I experimented in the lower left corner of one facade to do a sort of trompe-l'oeil area where the plaster has chipped off exposing the wattle and daub lattes underneath. It's looking as if it might just work. If so, I intend to put three or four such patches on each façade.

Next stage will be to build the front overhang and supporting beams for the second floor, and then take this thing up a level. Questions abound:
1) Should the upper lever not only hang over the lower, but also lean out in all directions, as many commercially available half-timbered houses do? Or is that more of a caricature feature than anything else?
2) Should I do a full second story, and only then work onto the roof (potentially adding an additional story) or should I build in planning for the roof on my second story design from the get-go? Already I can feel the architectural choices weighing heavily on my brow. <g>