How to guide - building a Balkan/Mediterranean cottage

I'm not sure "cottage" is the right word, maybe a small rural hut? Here's another how-to guide describing how I created a small rural dwelling using some odds and ends. I didn't have much of a plan before I started, other than intending to build a house in a Slovenian style, which stemmed from a conversation in a Facebook group on the Balkan region in WWII.

As with all projects, I started doing a bit of picture research, and found a few suitable reference photos (ref#1 and ref#2 and ref#3) for Slovenian rural houses from the period, but I decided that I probably couldn't knock one of those up in an afternoon...so the project morphed into more of a generic Balkan/Greek/Cretan building. Simplicity is the mother of invention, or some such saying. I then looked for some Greek buildings (Operation Marita being a scenario that I would like to game at some point) and found this great little building.  I've linked to the image, rather than post a copy of it, due to copyright issues.

So, my Sunday afternoon project ended up being a bit of an architectural amalgam: the size and shape of the Greek building, but more weathered like the pictures from the Slovenian architecture blog, but still representative enough of the whole region that I can use it in different scenarios.

Materials and Tools

• A little piece of foamcore that I had lying around
• Some bits of cardboard (one being a Rice Crispies cereal packet)
• A corrugated cardbox box with part of the paper liner pulled off (to create pantiles for the roof)
• A plastic drinking straw
• A couple of windows and a door from an old 4Ground kit
• A piece of cork tile
• A small piece of pebble-effect wallpaper
• PVA glue
• Knackered paint brush for applying the PVA
• Wall filler (spackle)
• Small spatula for spreading the filler
• Straight edge/ruler
• Scalpel/craft knife
• Hot glue gun (PVA would suffice)
• Sellotape
• Black spray paint
• White spray paint
• Some light coloured paints (poster paints, acrylics, or whatever you have)

Building the Main Structure

Here is the collection of cardboard waiting to be assembled into something for the gaming table.

I already had a small piece of foamcore, so the rest of the building dimensions were based off that. I marked the size of the door into the foamcore and then cut it out - I wanted to set the door into the wall. I cut some of the thicker cardboard (about 2mm thick) into a long strip which was the same height as the foamcore.

I cut the cardboard to size and, with some of the offcuts, cut four smaller pieces to use as bracing for the interior.

I cut the piece of cork tile as the base, but ensured that it fit neatly inside the four walls. Door recess is cut out and the position of the windows were marked.

Cheap hot glue gun purchased from Amazon.

The four walls were glued to the base and then the corner pieces glued inside. This was an afternoon project, so I wasn't bothered about creating a removable roof so that the interior could be accessed.

I wanted to model some of the building's render as having cracked and fallen off exposing the stone wall underneath. I picked up some pebble-effect wallpaper at B&Q a few years ago, which has the perfect texture for 28mm rough stone. I painted on some PVA to the areas where I wanted the exposed stone.

And then stuck on pieces of the wallpaper.

Some more wallpaper added plus the window frames and some more "wooden beams" made from the Rice Crispies packet were affixed to the top of the walls as facias.

The front of the building then had some of the cereal packet cut into rough strips with scissors for the door frame and glued on using PVA. You may note that I have not made reference to any specific measurements, used a ruler, or been particularly bothered about everything looking perfect. In keeping with the rural style of these buildings, nothing is especially square or straight.

Just prior to pasting on the wall filler, I painted a very light coat of PVA glue all over the model and let it dry for about 10 minutes until it was tacky - this helps the filler to adhere to it. Only a very thin layer of wall filler is applied, so it dries really quickly; the little dollop on the photo below shows how much was required for about half the wall.

Paste the filler over the edges of the wallpaper so that the "render" sits atop the "stone". Smooth the wall filler as much as you can, otherwise you get lumps and bumps that are not 1/56th scale and look a bit naff IMHO!

If you leave a small lip at the edges it creates the illusion, when painted, of the render looking like it is  covering the exposed stonework.

Making the Roof

This section has lots of words, which makes it sound really complicated and time-consuming, but it isn't. The main material is a cereal packet, so even if you get it wrong, you can throw away the card (or save it for the roofing battens later!) without any guilt.

To make the base for the roof, cut a piece of the cereal packet into a strip that is almost twice as wide as the building in one dimension (the length); the other dimension should overlap the width of the building by about a centimetre on each edge. To judge the length required for the roof, mark a point that is roughly two-thirds of the building - this is where we are going to bend it to create the apex of the roof. Fold the cardboard at that point using the straight edge/ruler and then cut off the excess length.

If you want some measurements to make this part a bit easier to follow, let's assume that the building is 10cm by 10cm square and 6cm tall. The size of the piece of cardboard (when it is laid flat) would be:

• 10cm width + 1cm overlap + 1cm overlap = 12cm total width
• 2/3rds of 10cm length is approx 6.5cm, so mark the apex line at 6.5cm, add another 6.5cm on the other side of the apex, so that the total length is 13cm
• When folded, the height of the apex should be ~4cm high above the building making the model about 10cm tall when the roof is on

One of the characteristic features of many Balkan/Mediterranean buildings is a hipped roof (four sloping sides as opposed to two sloping sides seen throughout a lot of northern Europe) with pantiles. To create the hipped/inset roof sections, take your now rectangular piece of cardboard (with a line marking the halfway point where the apex will be) and, along the apex line, make a mark about 1/6th from each edge (using the size noted above, this would be about 2cm) and then cut from that point to the corners. I have done that twice on the bottom edge of the piece shown below. Repeat this for the top edge.

Next, we need to make two inset/hipped sections. Below is what each finished piece will look like. The marked lines have been scored with the craft knife, so that they neatly fold along that line.

To work out the dimensions of this section, position the main part of the roof structure so that it would fit correctly onto the building, but with the 1cm overlaps hanging over the top of the facias. When you have done that you can work out the height and width of the piece that needs to be cut to fit within it.

This is what the hipped section looks like on the building.

This is the underside of the main roof base and one of the hipped sections.

Now we can attach the three parts of the roof base together. First, sellotape one edge of the hipped section underneath the main section as shown below, then affix the second edge of the hipped section underneath. Repeat for this for the second hipped section on the other side.

This is what the two hipped sections look like from the underside; add a bit more sellotape to each join to make sure they stay in place.

This is what the three-part roof base looks like when sellotaped together, though I have put it on the wrong way round (90 degrees rotated) in the photo below!

Adding the Tiles

Many buildings right across the Med and Balkan region feature ridged tiles known as pantiles like the ones in this photo.

To represent these in model form, I have found a cheap and easy-to-work-with material is corrugated cardboard. I picked a cardboard box out of the recycling and peeled off one side of the paper lining to leave the corrugations exposed. Use your craft knife or scalpel and the straight edge to gently cut the cardboard into thin strips. Don't press too hard otherwise you will squash the corrugations; one or two slightly flattened corrugations adds to the general rural feel, but better to make these damaged tiles the minority, rather than the majority.

Use the first strip as a guide for all the the subsequent strips that you cut, so that they are all close to being the same size. A little bit of variation in size doesn't matter, but if you aim to cut them as regularly as you can, then there will probably be some small variations in them, but not enough to matter. 

Using the cardboard cereal packet, cut several thin strips to act as battens. You can see the rough sizes of each piece below.

Attach the first strip to the bottom edge of one side using PVA glue. Ensure the ends of the strip overlap the hipped roof section on both sides.

Using one of the thin strips (the "batten"), glue this across the roof base so that it is touching the top of the first line of tiles. 

This will have the effect of lifting up the bottom edge of the next row of tiles and make them appear as though they are sitting on top of the tiles beneath them.

Repeat these steps until you have added several rows of tiles. You may have a little bit of a gap at the apex, but don't worry about that because we will cover it up with ridge tiles at the end.

You don't have to add full strips of tiles, for example, if you want to put a displaced tile, then cut a short strip then add a single tile at a slight angle...

...and then add the rest of the shortened strip on the other side of the single, slipped tile. Use plenty of PVA to ensure that the tiles stay fixed in place.

This is what the two main roof pitches look like when tiled. Leave the PVA glue to fully dry before trimming off the excess at either end with a pair of scissors.

This is what the trimmed edge looks like.

Next, add some more of the thin batten strips onto the edges of the hipped section to ensure that the strips of tile overlap the adjacent section.

Start gluing on more tile strips to the hipped section, but remember to leave a bit of tile overlapping the edge. I should really have left a bit more on the strip shown below! 

Once the glue has fully dried, we trim off the excess with scissors. You could leave the ridge lines between the hipped and main pitches like this, but I prefer to cover up the joins with "ridge tiles".

To make the ridge tiles, find yourself a drinking straw. The newer, recyclable cardboard ones are easier to work with, but I only had a plastic one to hand so used that. Cut the length of the straw into pieces which are slightly longer than the height of your roof tiles. Next, cut each piece of the straw tube into two half tubes to create two ridge tiles from each piece i.e. turn the circular straw into two semi-circular pieces.

Starting at the bottom of the roof, affix each ridge tile along the ridges/joins, overlapping them as you work upwards. Use either PVA glue or wall filler to stick them on. One of the advantages of the wall filler is that some of it squirts out from underneath the plastic straw, which you can press back down to create a better bond. There are two options for the apex ridge: use the same straw technique or use individual tiles from the corrugated cardboard. I have gone with the latter on this model to demonstrate the difference.

Once the roof was finished, I glued it onto the main structure. If I was spending more time on this project, then I would likely have created a removable roof and done something with the inside of the building too. I used a black spray paint to get into all the nooks and crannies of the roof (to create shading underneath the tiles) and a white spray paint for the walls.

Paint the roof tiles with a terracotta paint making sure to get into all the recesses. The paint I used was a tester pot from B&Q, which was on the thin side, so perfect for putting on a first coat and leaving a bit of the black undercoat showing through. I didn't paint it too thickly because if you over-saturate the corrugated cardboard with paint, then the corrugations collapse destroying your careful tiling work!

Weathering the Building

There is no real science to the final step, other than to take your time and apply less paint a little bit at a time. The white spray paint on top of the white polyfilla was far too clean for a rural cottage somewhere on the edge of the Mediterranean, so to weather it I used various creams, beiges and pale brown paints - some tester pots and some acrylics. The exposed stone work had the darkest colour (a mid beige) applied to it first as, then a light dry brush with a mid grey, then another light dry brush with an off white colour. Don't be too regular with the dry-brushing: do some bits and leave some other parts a bit patchy. Do the same (with the same colours on the window frames, door, door frame and facias.

To weather the render and give it that patchy, stained look, really dilute different coloured paints and dab a bit on, move it around with the brush a bit and also use your fingers to dab and smear it. Start off small, leave it to dry a little whilst you work on another bit and work your way around the building. The idea is to build up random layers of slightly different tones; it helps if you have some different coloured paints on your paint palette and mix them as you go, not forgetting to dilute them heavily. Add a few vertical streaks as well.

Something else that I did was carefully pick out the edge of the render, next to the exposed stone, in the off-white colour. Just enough whitish paint helps create a little more of a raised edge. Finally, around the bottom of the whole model, including the door and door frame, was to dab on a slightly less diluted mid grey colour and smear it around a bit. The pantiles also had bit of light weathering applied (after a second coat of terracotta) to make them a less uniform in colour. Again, a diluted mixture of different light colours was painted onto individual tiles.

The overall effect should be a bit like this doorway in central Portugal, but this photo could have been taken in any number of countries.

Whilst there are lots of photos on this how-to guide, this was actually a really quick and simple terrain building project. It took me longer to blog about it than create it! 

Here are a few pics of some Gebirgsjager patrolling.

I hope you enjoyed this (or at least found it useful) as much as I enjoyed making it. Please leave a comment or question.

Update: I made another similar house this weekend and added a couple of extra features: a chimney, some broken roof tiles and wooden cladding, all made using the same materials.