Constructing a Tudor Barn

Posted by Joseph Allen McCullough Feb 18, 2008

One of the things I love about living in England is the country’s near obsession with all things miniature. Model making, model railroading, and wargaming are all big hobbies over here. When you drive down the motorway, it is not unusual to see a sign advertising a miniature village.

Over the last couple of weeks I have joined in the fun by constructing my own miniature Tudor barn. If you would like to see, I have temporarily replaced my topic overview photo with a picture of the barn.

Construction was simple enough, though it did require a bit of patients. I started by cutting out the four walls from 5mm white foam board. These were attached via glue and dress maker pins. I then glued match-sticks at carefully measured intervals all around it. One of the great things about constructing something from this era is that any minor mistakes or imperfections actually make it look more authentic. Once the frame was in place, I cut two pieces of heavy cardboard to serves as the roof, then cut a bit of cereal box into a million little squares and glued them on top to serve as roof tiles.

The hardest part of the project was the plaster. Using regular interior house plaster, I filled the area between all of the match-sticks, making sure it went into all the corners, but not making any attempt to smooth it out. Once this was all dry, I painted the timber frames black, and went over the roof tiles in a couple shades of grey to make them look like slate.

It took me about two weeks, putting in about half-an-hour a day, but I think the results are worth it. I’m currently making a little shed to go with it.