Help please on how to model these windows

[John Brenchley]

Hi Everyone

 

I have been looking at the model as far as its progressed and am wondering if my size may be a bit large.  I had no known dimensions so was basing the size on counting bricks on the window edges.  I used 3" as the height of a brick based on current Australian bricks but am now wondering if older Victorian ones in the UK might have been a bit smaller.

 

Some of the dimensions I came up with were front windows top 6'0 x 4'6" , front windows lower 6'6" x 4'6", front doors 7'6" plus 2'6" for the window above the door.  Total floor to gutter height came out at about 23' for the two stories.

 

Do these sizes seem a bit big or am I OK to keep going.

 

Thanks

 

John

[Jim T]

Those look like handmade wirecut bricks which were probably made very locally to the buildings. They likely predate the standardisation in size which came in the Victorian period, when cheaper transport meant that it was more efficient to manufacture bricks in huge numbers away from the worksite.

 

I used to work for British Waterways and sourcing reclaimed bricks of the right size to repair old buildings was getting quite tricky - we often had to have them made by one of the few remaining craft brickworks. The manufacture and firing of bricks is a hugely interesting subject in its own right...

 

Jim

[Izzy]

Hi Everyone

 

I have been looking at the model as far as its progressed and am wondering if my size may be a bit large.  I had no known dimensions so was basing the size on counting bricks on the window edges.  I used 3" as the height of a brick based on current Australian bricks but am now wondering if older Victorian ones in the UK might have been a bit smaller.

 

Some of the dimensions I came up with were front windows top 6'0 x 4'6" , front windows lower 6'6" x 4'6", front doors 7'6" plus 2'6" for the window above the door.  Total floor to gutter height came out at about 23' for the two stories.

 

Do these sizes seem a bit big or am I OK to keep going.

 

Thanks

 

John

 

I think that perhaps your gut feeling might be right. Although houses vary greatly in size for the particular one you are replicating I would have thought a max internal room height of about 8' would be right both up and down with everything being relative to this, so the door and window sizes do seem a bit big. But the model proportions look about right and it certainly looks very good, especially the open sash windows.

 

Izzy

[bécasse]

I have a lot of experience of using brick counts from photos to size buildings. Generally pre-metric bricks can be relied on to be 9" x 4,5" in plan inclusive of the necessary allowance for mortar, but the height, again inclusive, varies much more but is very rarely less than 3" and if it is (as in some architectural feature bricks) it is usually immediately apparent. What is much more common is that bricks were taller than 3" and this is generally the case the further north and west one goes in the UK.

 

I had a friend who scaled a whole model building from photographs on the basis of brickwork building 12" per 4 courses but it was immediately obvious from the hipped roof that this had to be wrong. When I pointed this out (by providing a new drawing), he was adamant that 12" per 4 courses had to be right because it was what all the books said and he went outside to measure his own Victorian house (in the West Midlands) to prove it - where he found that 4 courses actually totalled 13,5"!

 

I always pencil a rough but accurate sketch on squared paper before making accurate drawings as this enables one to check the sizes of any joinery work, especially doors, as joinery tended to be made manufactured (surprisingly early too) in multiples of 3". Sketches also help one to assess whether the building looks right - if it doesn't, your estimations are probably wrong somewhere.

[John Brenchley]

Thanks for those thoughts

 

Jim - you refer to handmade wirecut bricks - can you suggest what their dimensions might be.

 

Izzy - agreed, its the floor to roof height that worries me a bit too.

 

Becasse - thanks for your insight - 3'' for the bricks would agree with my thoughts too so maybe I'm not too far ought with my calculations.

 

 

One dimension that people may be able to confirm is average front door height - I have come up with 7'6" which seems a bit tall - does anyone live in a house with similar looking doors?

 

Thanks

 

John

[Orange Cat]

A common depth for old bricks was 2¹/₂ inches. How does that work out? (Remember to allow for the mortar)

[Jim T]

A common depth for old bricks was 2¹/₂ inches. How does that work out? (Remember to allow for the mortar)

 

I'd concur with that. Especially in the Georgian period bricks could be quite thin. Maybe someone on here is close by and could pop round and measure. A pic of the model (or one you've built previously) usually piques the owner's interest!

 

Jim

[richbrummitt]

standard heights are 2040 or 2120 nowadays. Taller doors are available. Ceilings have lowered considerably, which is possibly why doors are the height they are now. I don't think your door could be out by more than about 4" in height. That suggests your bricks are close to the right size

[Orange Cat]

To save all this brick counting malarky, how about a nice scale drawing of the building concerned? http://www.westdevon.gov.uk/planningdoc?DocNo=117550 

[John Brenchley]

To save all this brick counting malarky, how about a nice scale drawing of the building concerned? http://www.westdevon.gov.uk/planningdoc?DocNo=117550 

 

Brilliant thank you so much - no longer living in the UK, I'm totally out of touch with this sort of planning resource.

 

Even more pleasing is that at first glance, the drawing seems to confirm some of my dimensions, so quite a large domestic building and I may not need to start again

 

Best wishes

 

John

[Orange Cat]

Number 2, which is the house next door, also had an application to install new windows which only has details of the replacement window units. The size of the ones for the lounge is given as 1300w x 1800h while those for the front bedroom are 1350w x 1700h. http://www.westdevon.gov.uk/planningdoc?DocNo=160769

It seems you might be fractionally on the large size with your model but not by very much.

[John Brenchley]

I progressed a bit further over the weekend and have put together the right hand annex. As it was still light when I got home from work today, I had time to take a couple of pictures.

 

The left hand annex is drawn up ready to print but I still need to draw the rear wall of the main building and fix it in place then look at putting a sub roof in place.

 

 

 

It has been interesting reading the recent posts on Modbury as that features a contrasting method of all plastic construction.  Ian is making a really great job of the station building.  This is only my second building using card as I also generally prefer plastic with its greater embossed effect but I just could not see a way of accurately combining the embossed brick and embossed stone with such minute detail around each window for this building.  Also it is what I would call a secondary building, not being part of the station complex, so will be more in the background rather than a main feature, hence I think the lack of 3D detail will be less obvious.

 

Best wishes

 

John

 

 

[Donw]

Actually John I think the lack of 3D details in buildings towards the rear can help give a sense of distance. 

 

As for sizes of both bricks and houses you can find allsorts  We had one cottage were the doors were only 70ins high and the gutter height was about 14ft at the rear with the upstairs windows set low in the room and the ceiling sloping at the rear. the one you are building looks a more substantial place than most. The lights about the door indicate fairly high ceilings. Very handy someone finding the plan for you.

The result does look good. We have practical experience of building brickwork quoins from extending a stone cottage and we were matching the originals.

Don

[CF MRC]

Less is often more, in 2mm scale.

 

Tim

[John Brenchley]

Having completed the three main building parts as boxes up to gutter height, I started thinking about the large central chimney.  I thought that for strength it would be better if it was attached to the ceiling and the roof built up around it rather than just fixing it to the top of the slates where it might be easily knocked off.

 

The picture below shows the rather ornate style of chimney pots

 

 

Some research on Google suggested that this style of "castle" chimney pot was in the region of 1foot wide by about 3 foot or 3 foot 6 inches high.

 

I had some 1/16 hollow square section brass left over from a previous project so decided to use this as a starting point.  Using progressively wider drills, I opened out the central hole till the middle of each side was quite thin then used a triangular file to start creating the four corner points.  The thin sides allowed me to use an old scalpel blade to deepen and sharpen the bottom of the V point as the brass was now thin enough to cut.

 

 

To represent the two ornate bands just below the points, I soldered on some 33swg and 36swg phosphor bronze wire.  I started with one side held in place with masking tape as below

 

 

The wires were then folded round each side and soldered in place to give the following end result

 

 

The bottom two thirds of the chimney were tapered to be wider at the bottom.  I considered methods of achieving this with metal but decided the easiest way for me would be to glue 4 pieces of 10 thou plastic to the bottom of the pot and use a knife and files to create the taper.  The end result is as below.

 

 

Only another 7 to make now!!!!!

 

Best wishes

 

John

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[John Brenchley]

Its hard to believe that its taken another 3 weeks to complete all the chimney pots and put them together but at last the job is done - not my best effort perhaps as the eight pots are not quite identical to each other but it stands up to the two foot rule.

 

I joined the eight pots together using a grid of 20thou square plastic pieces to keep them evenly spaced and cemented this on top of a piece of 40thou for the base.  I chamfered the top edges of the base at 45 degrees.  I joined several pieces of 2.5mm square plastic together to give me a chimney size of 5mm x 10mm and made this long enough to go through the ceiling and be attached to the floor of the building for extra strength.

 

 

I masked the chimney base and sprayed the top with a grey under coat.  A piece of the printed stone paper was glued to one side of the chimney with super glue.  The corners were scored lightly and the stone paper wrapped and glued round each side.  I painted the pots with a selection of buff, grey and salmon coloured paints using a fair bit of dry brushing to get a mottled dirty pottery colour.

 

The pictures below show the finished chimney pushed in place through the ceiling but not yet glued in place - I'll probably remove it while I fit the roof pieces rather than risk damaging it during this process.

 

 

Best wishes

 

John

[Yorkshire Square]

That looks excellent John. Very attractive pots; well worth the effort!

[John Brenchley]

Over the past few weeks I've been working on the roof for these cottages.  I started with a card sub frame as I wanted to be sure of the correct shape of the various pieces before adding the slates.

 

 

For the top surface I used thin pieces of card onto which I laid the slate strips as marketed under the ClearSolutions label.  Before cutting out each of  the horizontal strips, I also cut through the visible part of each vertical gap between each slate .  I think this improves the look once weathering is added to the finished roof.

 

The various roof pieces for the main building before any weathering are shown below.

 

 

To start the weathering I apply a heavily diluted coat of India ink which adds a bit of definition to the joins between the slates and just tones down the rather light grey finish that they start off with.  I then dust on random patches of grey and brown weathering powders and then fix it all with a spray of matt varnish.

 

 

Before fixing the roof pieces in place, I added gutters made by attaching a strip of plastic 30 thou quarter round to a sheet of 10 thou plastic, fixing the top of the quarter round about 10 thou below the edge of the backing sheet.  This gives just sufficient of a lip to help guide scrapers and files to groove away a channel in the top of the quarter round. I then cut off the finished gutter and its backing to whatever depth of backing is appropriate for the building being modelled - in this case, about 2mm.  After applying a spray of undercoat, I chose to spray the whole gutter and its backing a dark grey and then hand painted the visible part of the backing below the gutter with a greyish green enamel paint.

 

Below is the finished roof on the main part of the building.

 

 

To represent the lead ridge capping, I first glued lengths of 10 thou steel guitar string to the top of each ridge with super glue, scraping off all the surplus glue so that it did not show through and distort the lead layer which was another strip of adhesive paper scored down the middle and then folded over the guitar string.

 

In these pictures, I have also added window sills of 20 thou square section plastic with a layer of 5 thou added to the top to go into the window recess and cover the card edge.

 

The side building still needs its ridge capping and window sills and at the back, the final triangle of roof is just resting in place as it still needs the slate strips added.

 

 

Best wishes

 

John

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[RichardW1]

Don't forget the down pipes from the gutters, how about an old drum or barrel as a water butt. External soil and vent pipes would also be evident. This is turning out to be a super looking building.

[John Brenchley]

Don't forget the down pipes from the gutters, how about an old drum or barrel as a water butt. External soil and vent pipes would also be evident. This is turning out to be a super looking building.

 

Hi Richard

Thanks for your comments.

Yes, the down pipes etc are still on the list of things to do. There are also some more building extensions to complete on the left side and at the back.

John