A Different Sort of Ruin

While I have been working on the western European urban ruins, I am also making another group of ruins for rural Eastern Europe. These are to be in the style of the winter buildings made in May and June last year (here).

The first building is a simple rectangular structure. It would have been easy to just make a MDF shell and dress the exterior, but that is not me. As with the western European ruins I want to make the interiors interesting so I chose to construct the walls using wooden coffee stirrers to give me the rustic look I want.

The problem I discovered with coffee stirrers is that they are 5mm wide which by scale would have made them more than a foot wide and that looks wider than the weatherboards in most historical illustrations and photographs. The solution was to cut a groove down the centre of the stirrer. The beauty of this is that the scalpel naturally follows the grain and creates a nice irregular groove. I also shaved the smooth edges of the stirrers irregularly to create a rough hewn appearance. The end result is a nice grained finish.

The lengths of stirrers are then laid over upright studs, leaving gaps for the door and windows. Damage to the walls is created by cutting away parts of the wall.

When finished the opposite side is laid up making sure that the inside of the walls can be seen where damage has occurred.

When this was all done the window and door frames were created and glued into place.

The end piece that will form the roof truss was made a little differently. I made a cardboard form to which I glued on more cardboard in the shape of the chimney. I cut a couple of holes in the card that can be used to replicate damage. The stirrers were then glued on.

The completed pieces, with the chimney space left clear, were left to dry and when ready all the pieces were coated with several coats of PVA glue to strengthen the structure then left for the glue to set hard.

The chimney was then added using epoxy putty.

All the pieces then needed to be painted at this point because once assembled it will be too difficult to get to some areas.

The next step was to build a base on a double thickness of 3mm cardboard on which a wooden floor made of more coffee stirrers, suitably carved to look rough hewn, was all glued together and painted.

The walls of the structure was then fixed to the base and a stone hearth was added at the same time.

The edge of the base was then given a stone facing and a front step.

The next step was the construction of the roof. For this I wanted the chimney end intact, then a removable section that is partly collapsed and the rest will be represented in the rubble. The intact section was a relatively simple build of split matchsticks laid over a flat surface then painted in ever lightening shades of Burnt Siena. A kicked in door leans against the fireplace.

The removable section was a little more complex and required the construction of a couple of trusses.

Then a few battens were strung over the trusses and timbers were laid on top and painted.

The final step in the structure build was to create some collateral rubble. Below are three removable pieces that can be placed in the building, but moved to make space for figures.

The building was then glued to a MDF base measuring 170mm square and broken down fences and rubble were added. The rubble and fences were then coated with a couple of coats of PVA glue before being painted and weathered.

And with the removable roof and the rubble pieces removed and put to the left of the image.

With the basic work done all that remained to be done was to let the snow fall.

Another in this series is under construction now.