# A home for your 'hood



## joe rusz (Jan 3, 2008)

Like it says under the "Buildings" title, "Your little people gotta have somewhere to live and work!!" A two-story house would be nice, one with a large front porch where grampa can sit and rock and wave at the neighbors. An outfit called Laserkit makes a dandy model--in HO, which is a mite small, even for 1:32. So I upscaled this fine design to 1:22.5, borrowing the dimensions from my small hotel, which I promise to reveal here soon. Of course, I built a cardboard mockup first, because it's a chore to cut 1/8-inch thick styrene. And what if you make a mistake? So I made me some mock walls and Xerox-copied the windows from my hotel because my various Grandt Lines were too small. Then I moved the windows around until they were positioned correctly, relative to the way they appear in the photo of the HO kit.

Now most folks would just glue the walls and roof together, but I'm getting really anal in my old age. I painted the walls with Rustoleum Gray Automotive Primer, which I use as a base coat on my styrene buildings, and painted the roof with Rustoleum Black Automotive Primer after covering it with masking tape to simulate tarpaper. Oh, and I made a balsa wood chimney too and colored it with Bragdon dusting powder.

If I were modeling indoors, I could easily call it a day, but after I live with the mockup for a few days, I'll transfer all of my handiwork to styrene and get started on the real project. Stay tuned.


*Inspiration is where you find it, in this case, a photo of a dandy, two-story house with a neat front porch as spotted on the Laserkit website.*
* No wall dimensions given for this HO structure, which I scaled up to 1:22.5 while borrowing actual wall sizes and such from my small hotel, *
* as seen here. I copied the hotel's windows and glued 'em in place behind the window openings to add a bit of realism.*









*Positioning the paper windows until they looked properly balanced*.* Later glued 'em in behind the openings.*









* Getting 'er done with my trusty glue gun (man, that molten glue is HOT!) :0* 










* Assembled, painted and ready for occupancy. Batteries (and styrene) not included.*

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## Bob Pero (Jan 13, 2008)

Very nice. I really like your technique.


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## Rod Fearnley (Jan 2, 2008)

Mhhhhhm very interesting. Laserkit website you say.......................... 
Looks good Joe.


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## Dick Friedman (Aug 19, 2008)

If this home were about twice or maybe three times as long, it would look much like the Fred Harvey Dining Room and hotel in Florence, KS. If I could get 1:32 plans, I might tackle it this winter, when it's so cold and damp here in Sacramento.


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## joe rusz (Jan 3, 2008)

Dick, 

The closest thing to plans I used were the original drawings for a small hotel, which I built earlier this year. These appeared in an old issue of Model Railroader. For this house, I resized the drawings so the place didn't look exactly like the hotel. I also changed the pitch of the roof slightly. But this is all "ballpark" stuff, as I wasn't too concerned about exact measurments (Hey, it's make believe!). The window sizes are the only dimensions I carried over, mostly because I didn't want to bother resizing the originals. 

BTW, while the house that appears on the Laserkit website sits on the "ground," I must mount my version on a half-inch thick hunk of plastic, which will serve as a foundation. The reason is purely esthetic: with the building sitting on the ground, the porch was only two feet off the ground, which made it look more like a terrace. Anyway, with a foundation, I will be able to put some plastic sheet bricks around the bottom, adding an extra architectural element to the house. Anal? Who said I was anal? ;-)


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