Shire Houses

The spare Hirst Arts blocks that I used for the hobbit hole were actually so that I could build some houses, but the hobbit hole was so much fun that I did that first!

I had enough blocks created to make the Dragon Inn, but thought I'd actually just make a few houses instead. I'll maybe do the bigger building next time =)

So I have three houses, one small, one medium, one large - there are probably three bears or something involved.

When I first got the blocks I started just by rearranging them in different ways to see what they looked like.

Then, after a lot of mucking around (and you can see in the background that I was watching the LotR DVDs while doing so) I glued it all together. The angled pieces were my main limiting factor, so I decided I needed one house that used both sorts and had an asymmetrical roof.  

I watched a lot of youtube clips on how to do roofing and went for the cheapest option I had - cardboard. If you look up cardboard shingle roof you'll see many versions. Here's a picture of when I realised I hadn't cut the little notches in this side of the roof even after I'd glued it. That was fun. Not!
I also managed to really warp one of the roofs as I let it dry before gluing it onto the building. D'oh! Anyway, it's all good now, I just heavily glued the back side of it then sat and watched more LotR while holding it in place until the glue set.

The small house has one door and window, the medium has one door and two windows and the large one has two doors and two windows. I used the same paint scheme as for the hobbit hole.

So there you have it, some more scenery! With my birthday coming up I'm hoping to get a green grass mat to put it all on!