Welcome to Grimm's!

Here is a walk through the build process.  I'll try to give some detail about how things were done or about new techniques or materials that I tried out.  If they worked for me, they can work for you too!  This was a fun project, a bit stressful as I had a lot to do and a little time to do it in.  I worked on this off and on for about three weeks at night - maybe 2-4 hours a shot. I'd say I probably ended up with around 50 hours in it so far. 

I wanted to do this page a little different from the normal small thumbnails, so I'll be posting big pictures with descriptions. The comments for any picture will be right below the picture.  I'll need to split this into different pages to keep it loading quickly.   Use the menu below to conveniently jump around OR start on this page and keep going forward at the end of each page. 

  :: Intro  ::  Tower  ::  Walls  ::   Door ::  Stairs  ::  Roof   ::  Bay Window  ::  Conservatory  ::  Fountain  ::  Scenery ::

I've seen others use wood for stairs, so that was the natural first choice for me.  I drew a shape on bass wood and staring cutting from there.  Once I had the bottom piece down, I cut a shorter top piece. 

After gluing the two pieces together, I used a pick to carve lines into the soon to be concrete.  The wood sticks back through the opening so that the door can sit on it. 

The concrete railings were tough, but I built them like one of the bathroom walls I'm working on in 1:1 scale right now.  I cut the sides out of cardstock to get the shape right and then traced that onto styrene and cut it out again. 

Here are all the styrene walls.  I used wood to make spacers and then glued them on one side (after bending the styrene to an approximate radius for the stairs.)  Then I glued on the other side and trimmed any left over material. 

Here are the sides sitting in place for a test. 

And from above.   

I wasn't sure what kind of post I should have at the end, so I took some different pictures to see what looked best.  I thought of the post on the right or maybe a larger concrete block with a statue? 

 

More test photos.  I love that digital cameras allow us to take tons of pictures and check them out first to see if something will look good.  

Here's how I built the posts in the above pictures.  Wood and styrene.  I didn't use these on the stairs, but they ended up on the roof. 

All in place (minus the ends.)  This is painted with acrylic dove grey.  I actually ended up painting the posts with concrete later. 

Now with weathering!  What a difference some chalk can make.  Oh I also added those brass brass over the door at some point.  

I took a whole series of pictures right off to see how things looked and make sure they were in the right proportions.  Here is the door with the original kit stairs.  You can see the fountain propped up at left.  I had originally thought about putting a big bird statue above the door.  Not BigBird the yellow guy from Sesame Street mind you.  he's just not scary. 

On to the making the the Roof!

 

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