Furnishings

The five sets

Following on from last week's Cottage build post, as promised here's another look at some of the furniture items that I bought recently. There are five sets in the series (as far as I can tell), the photograph on the right showing all of them.
From top to bottom, left to right:
Bedroom, Living room (shown last time) Kitchen, Study (I think) and finally, my favourite - the Bathroom.
All of these contain very small parts and whether it be an oil lamp or a toilet roll holder they're very identifiable as to what they're meant to be.
The packs also contain cross-over bits, so that identical chairs appear in different packs and the round tables appear in three packs., but they also all contain at least one unique item too, for example the coffee-grinder in the kitchen pack or the wall telephone!

Bathroom

 The bathroom set is my favourite of all the sets, probably because I've tried making baths (without much success) and toilets (with only a little more success).
The little detail bits that also come with it are a joy too, from the sink unit, the previously mentioned toilet roll holder, a stool and so on.

Kitchen

The kitchen comes with the ubiquitous chairs (just the two though) and the familiar table, but it also has three unique furniture items too. 
As one would expect, there is a stove (Arga type -middle back of piccy) , and two cabinet type things; the coffee grinder (red) is unique to this set whilst the jug and bowl can be found in others too.

Kitchen pieces in place

Back of Bedroom Set.

 The bedroom set contains what you probably would expect to find in a bedroom - a bed (surprise surprise), a set of drawers, a bedside table and a dressing table. There is also another oil lamp, bowl, jug and chair too.
 I chose to show the back of the set to illustrate the fact that most of these pieces don't have a back to them and are obviously designed to be placed up against walls .

Bedroom bits

Bedroom furnishings in situ

 
I haven't as yet glued any of the pieces in place in the cottage, but as I bought two of each of the five sets, I have plenty of options.

The study's unique pieces

 









 

The "Study" set has a mere two unique items in it, the other pieces all being found in one or more of the other sets (mostly the dining room set). However the two items are worthy of a mention as they're both rather large pieces (and of course another three chairs and a table are not to be sniffed at!).
As can be seen in the photograph there is a rather grand panelled cabinet and another desk, larger than the living room one, shown in last week's blog post.
Obviously all these models have nought but a basic colour scheme on them and would benefit greatly from a decent paint-job.

Desk and cabinet

Finishing off the "grand tour", here's a couple of photographs of the 'furnished' cottage from above.
If the furnishings had been some of my own scratchbuilt items or even, card ones there would be a lot less space and it would probably look very crowded. As it stands, with a dozen or so pieces furniture in place it may look a bit sparse, but there is more than ample room for figures (even those on 25mm bases!).

Another view , for no real reason.

So that's it, the cottage could be ready to 'movein' at a moments notice (if I ever finally decide how to arrange the furnishings). I'm sure it hasn't escaped anyone reading this that there is no obvious time period that applies to this collection either. Many of the pieces are as usable for the 17th Century as the 21st century, though the upright flush toilet probably dates back to the late 19th/early 20th century and the oil lamps don't see much use nowadays. either!

My Stoetzel build.

Other than practising my Fen Shui this last week,  I've also started another Stoetzel build, that came with it's own list of 'problems'. It's one of the larger produced and despite looking forward to making this model, has not been a very satisfying build so far. - More of this at a future date though.

My Poundworldbargainbuy Chopper.

 In between cutting and gluing I've also been working on that £1 bargain chopper, cutting the toy components away and attempting to smooth out the 'joins', with varying success. It has reached the stage where it's been undercoated (gloss black) and requires painting  - not something I'm looking forward too and a bit of research, revealed it to probably be a representation of Airbus.

Despite real-life domicidal upheavals, ongoing health issues and Xmas on the horizon I've also been working on my version of Two Hour Wagames' Pirate rules "And a bottle of rum", which I've found to be the most akin to what I've wanted from a set of their rules (though I still dislike their shooting rules - haha) and 'pirate' rules in particular. I have a lot of THW rules in many genres and these I have found the most likeable. Other than the shooting rules I've mostly been making the game into more of a rpg than the pg 'lite' type of game is is at present. Also, as I don't have a lot of room to fight sea actions with my 20" + ships on my 8' x 4' table I've developed a set of abstract ship to ship combat rules and am awaiting some much needed feed-back (as I am with my gladiatorial beast rules).

Finally, am I the only one that dislikes the new-look blogger dashboard? - Just saying 

That's it then for another week, I hope that this spurt of enthusiasm will continue unabated for some time despite all the hurly-burly that is continuing around my own purlieu.


As always I hope you've found something of interest and your comments are both welcomed and appreciated.

The Cottage

Stoetzal's Cottage

Well, I did manage to finish off the Stoetzal Cottage build that I'd started last week.
There wasn't a lot I could do to this model to make it different from those of everyone else. The files don't allow any image manipulation (from someone with my techy skills at least.!).
The model itself has a footprint of 7"x7" and the height to the roof ridge is about7" too.

The 5mm 'step'

One of the features of all Stoetzal buildings, as far as I can tell is the "step" that appears (or rather doesn't) at entrances.


As all the walls, floors etc. are designed for 5mm foamboard it does mean that door 'float' 5mm above ground level - a feature I'm not particularly fond of.
To cure this is an easy enough task (as can be seen in the photograph above) by adding one's own step. I had originally intended to incorporate the step into the base foamboard, but tiredness ended up with me cutting the wrong bit!.
The fix was simple enough, I cut a separate piece of foamboard to a suitable size, and with minimal modelling
The finished 'step' piece can be seen below:

The step

The 'step' was painted very quickly before glueing onto the front wall and base (using the 'tag for extra support') and although it appears grey, I only used browns and sandy colours with a dark brown wash to get the effect I wanted.

The roof was probably the most difficult to assemble even though it was a mere two parts glued together, but luckily the two parts meet at about 90 degrees making the use of foamboard pieces at right angles fairly simple.
The chimney though for the cottage is one piece and if using a 'lift-off; roof makes the positioning of it important.
 I decided to cut the chimney into two parts, with the upper part attached to the roof (giving it greater strength) and the lower part, being shorter, making it easier to move figures inside the building.

Chimney bit inside roof

 

The photograph on the right shows he model from above (without the roof - duh!).
All internal walls are rabbeted into other walls or the chimney breast; the latter having been cut down to allow the easier roof removal as mentioned above and also making it less likely that the building will be knocked about ( I guess).
Whilst I didn't have any of the three doors (two internal and one external-) open-able. Whilst it's an admirable feature of model buildings, I've never had the need in any of the games I've played.or seen. 'Glazed' windows on the other hand do make a building look 'lived in', I think many appear Ghost -like without ! Clear plastic pieces glued between the foamboard and the outer paper skin is a quick fix and well worth doing imo.

Internal view

Alternate internal view. (spot Sid through the window!)

So what about internal detailing ? Well, that's for another time and another post (probably next week) and as I 'll be using my recent furniture purchases will simply be a matter of opening the blister packs, placing them and photographing them

Overall I'm pleased with the model, it's simple and useful over many eras, 17th -18th century onwards and I can see it being used in my pirate games (now that I've just about got the rules to the state I want them)

That's it then, once more, for another week and as always, your comments are both welcomed and appreciated.

New Build

New Build (Stoetzal Cottage)l

This last weekend has seen me make inroads into another building, a Stoezel' Cottage, probably the simplest of the many models he makes.
Progress was slow simply because it took  more time than I had imagined to get prepared for it. Finding new scalpel blades,glue etc. and even just locating my cutting board all became unwelcome hindrances.
I was hoping to finish this off in an afternoon but, as always, real-life had to interfere with far more problems than I envisaged.

Nevertheless progress has been made and once I've found another felt-tip I reckon I can finish this off in another two or three one-hour sessions (all I can manage at the moment).
One of the reasons why I'd have liked to have finished the above Stoetzel's Cottage is that it would have been the ideal setting to show off the new furniture that I've bought.
Sid went missing for the first photoshoot so a random gangster figure that was on hand, was recruited into the role.
The photograph has a ruler also which I don't normally do, but was at the request of my good friend "Captain Jack" (no blog but he can be found on FB)  who was intrigued by the furniture (- listed as 1/48 scale and imo fits perfectly with 28mm figures.)  and wanted  Grandfather Clock

Sid  with table,chairs, and oil lamp

The Grandfather Clock was only one item amongst many, most of the bits fitting somewhere time wise, interwar, but obviously usable in a great many other periods too!

Writing desk with great internal detail

Mystery object -though the mystery is now solved!

Group shot

Scale-wise I think these fit really well and I'm very pleased with them, much more so than the sample multipart 1/43rd scale shop assistant. As can be seen in the photograph, he's a giant compared to the "28mm" (ahem) figure of Sid alongside him!
It was a big disappointment as there were at least another 50 or so civilians that looked ideal for a Gangster era game.
In the catalogue of 1/43 goodness I'd also thought that I'd found a very useful figure for a fellow blogger but alas the size of the figure ends that particular line of though. (On the good news front though, I have found, what I consider to be just what he is looking for!)

That's it for this week, I'll hopefully finish the cottage this week and post about it next week, again showing off some of my new purchased furniture.

As always your comments are both welcomed and appreciated.

Interesting finds

Bikes !

Another week and more visits into the world of Poundbargainlandworld, well quite a few visits if truth be told. I regularly visit two "Poundlands" after my hospital visits (of which there have been quite a few recently), my local "Poundland" and "Bargain Buys", more frequently (Mostly for glue, matt spray and sweets) and I only occasionally visit "Poundworld" as it's a bit of a trek to get there.

The packs as they come (yep, I know it's a shit photograph)

However, I have had the opportunity to tour all five shops in the last week and this post shows the  results of my wanderings.
First up then are these two packs of bikes, three different colours per pack, so I bought two packs to include each of the four colours available.
I'd spotted these a while ago and didn't get the there at the first opportunity, I was very happy to find them again as I missed out so many times not purchasing something the first time around!

Sid with the bikes, showing how good (imo) they are scale-wise.

Sid showing the scale isn't bad at all.

I have to confess, I love Helicopters,I really love helicopters and I 've looked at this particular one for a very time. It's a push along kid's toy and I wasn't sure if I likes it or not, as it comes with in-built 'features' I really don't like.
I decided though that it would be worth a little effort to 'sav' it (and for a £1 I  thought it was worth a punt)

Have you spotted the unwanted "feature" yet? 

How about now ? (The arrow shows the pull-string thing)

The underneath reveals the monstrosity that shows this s the toy it really is.
Once out the packaging it's revealed as a pull the cord and watch the this 'fly' along the floor, couple that with the truly awful wheel assembly sitting on the underside.
I foresee a lot of sawing and filing to get this into any semblance of a usable model.
I haven't a clue what make it's meant to be either, which won't help with the paint-job it'll need (maybe it'll just end up black!)

The close up view -aaarrrghhh!

A bus!

Another, rather cheap looking vehicle (It's a bus- surprise, surprise!) was this 'Greyhound' bus.
There were several,  differing only in the stickers that had been applied and the one I plumped for was the one with the US flag on it (naturally), the other choice being Australia!
Whilst it's very basic (no interior detail etc.) the scale is quite good. It will add to the general gridlock chaos on my roads and shouldn't look too out of place.

A bus' rear end!

Out of interest I showed this particular purchase to my wife (and not for any reason to try and justify my flagrant spending, oh no!)  and asked her what she thought , as I really didn't quite know the original purpose.
She thought they were either dress  'buttons' or cake decorations.
I on the other and saw cabbages and flower beds!
I didn't think to take a photograph of them sans-packaging, with Sid for scale, another time maybe.

Photoshopped to show all the 'intersting' sheets (and photographer's shadow)

Though maybe not immediately apparent from my photo collage these are pages from a "Basic Art" design pad (or so the blurb says).  It consists of 30 sheets 6" x 6" with three sheets of each different one. I've shown the ones with what I consider the most interesting ones  from my viewpoint would be very useful as wall paper for some of my scratchbuilt buildings. The sheets not shown are rather bland colours but still usable.

A second collection of potential 'wallpapers' also grabbed my eye and these can be seen in the photograph on the left. There are only eight sheets in the pack each 6" x 4", but they are adhesive backed and feel like a very thin cotton. Once more hey could be used as wallpapers or carpets (they really do have that feel). Other than the rather 'meh' black and white striped one, the others all have great modelling possibilities.
There is at least one other pack, but with different designs.

My final purchase was the pack shown on the right, a collection of plastic see-in-the-dark glowing dinosaur bones/fossils.
Despite my best efforts at using photoshop the pieces are very difficult to see.
I though of particulal interest to some gamers would be the mammoth (bottom right) which maybe would be a little too small for 28mm figures, is probably near enough in scale for 15mms, the other dinos less so.
I have no actual use for these, but having missed out in the past I did think I would purchase the pack anyway and to my delight I got it for 50p ! Poundlandbargain world after all! 

So, two weeks ' worth of pocket money just frittered away, but I was very happy with all my 'bargain' buys.

That's it then for another week, but I would like to add that I have ticked off another item from my 'Bucket List',  namely taking part in the  'Gladiatoris kickstarter!.
You can read more about this on my other blog (Zabadak's Gladiator World) HERE.

As always your comments are both welcomed and appreciated.