Shoe's 30 for 30, day 10: village hall

And we're back to builds today.  All of my previous buildings had simple rectangular footprints.  Today's challenge was to build a structure with an extension, in this case, the entryway.  I imagine this building as the main hall for a village or shire or something, where the reeve or mayor might live or do business.  The vagueness of the last sentence indicates that I need to do some research soon.

The base is a thin, about 6"x4"x0.25" piece of XPS with a flagstone texture mounted on a close-cropped piece of medium weight chipboard.  It's got a 2"x2" extension in the front to make every thing more difficult.  I don't expect the chipboard to warp much since it doesn't extend too far past the XPS.  The walls are thinner than normal, about a quarter of an inch, basically the off cuts I had laying around.  I normally use half inch thick so this time I reinforced the inside with crafting sticks.  I'll also note that the timbering helped cover up some of the places I wasn't super careful. 

The roof is foam board again with the glued side de-papered.  The extension made this a heck of a lot harder than normal and also made the shingling more difficult.  As if that needs to be more bullshit.  I had some pretty serious gaps between the extension roof and the normal roof.  I tried fairly unsuccessfully to fill the gap with scraps and hot glue so next time I'll be a heck of a lot more careful with it.  The shingling does cover it up OK, so there's that.

There's a good deal of wood on this build which I've generally avoided.  When working with XPS I either use a fine-toothed comb or a metal brush to make wood texture.  Those don't work with real wood and I've never liked etching with a hobby knife or sculpting tool though I've done both.  Today I found that I could use the gnarling on my hobby knife handle to etch the wood.  I don't think it's quite as good as hand-carving textures but it's good enough and a heck of a lot faster.

It's as if I like pain.

The door probably deserves slightly more explanation than it's gotten the last couple times.  I cut out the door from the wall, this serves as the form.  I glue coffee stirrers bottom to top larger than required with two side ways out front.  I cut everything to size after it all dries then hit it with a coat of Agrax Earthshade because the only talent I have is liquid.  A glass bead for a door knob and thin metallic-painted strips of cardboard for hinges rounds out the detail.

Total build time including a bunch of messing around with the extension is around six hours. Tomorrow will probably be painting this guy.