Ever build a model of your own house for your layout?

I've thought about it, but a large part of my 1889 "Queen Ann" style house is round and has many crazy roof angles.

Same with the Hollis, Long Island, NY train station at which I spend MANY hours watching trains in the late 1940s early '50s...rounded on both ends. It was burned down by arsonists in 1967, and only a few poor photos exist.

Not the house we currently live in...it's too 'sprawling' for the empty lots on the layout.

 

BUT...your thread has renewed my passion to build a model of the home I grew up in...a small (footprint) 2-story brick colonial with a screened front porch, summer awnings, detached white clapboard single-car garage, blooming azaleas, dogwood, roses, hydrangeas all around....!  Quintessential 'home' to a bazillion wonderful memories.

 

I....must....get....off....my....mental....butt....and....do....THIS!!

 

Thanks, Martin, for the encouragement.

 

KD

I am planning to model my own house on the layout I'm building. Should fit nicely, a small 2 bedroom Cape with an attached garage. Great Thread!

 

Bruce

My house is a typical modern mostly-brick texas house without too many corners or architectural features.  Since the pad it occupies (including the attached garage) is rectangular, this should be a more straightforward build.

Yes, there is a forum member who has a nice one, but I can't remember his name.  He may see this thread and respond.  He has shown it on the forum many times.

.....

Dennis

Dennis I figured somebody else must have had this idea before. I hope he does post it in this thread. That's the kind of inspiration I need!

CSX Al if I remember right built model of his home for his RR, contact him thru email in his info.

I've built models of all of my sibling's houses, my house, my daughter's house, and the house that I grew up in.  I'm working on my son's new house currently.  Don't have any great pictures but here's some samples:

 

I built my house first and the intent was to place it on my Christmas layout.  Thus it's 1/4" scale.  Same intent on the other builds so they are all 1/4" scale.  If you do it take tons of measurements and don't compromise on detail.  Detail and scale "everything" sell it!!!

 

MY HOUSE:

 

 

My Sister's House:

 

My Daughter's House:

 

The House that I grew up in, in other words my parents' house:

 

My Brother's House:

 

- walt

OMG, Walt,  those are awesome!

 

Thanks for sharing, that's exactly what I was talking about. 

 

Martin

When I saw your topic heading I thought it meant, did you built a full-size house to accomodate a layout. Which I sorta done; I have an upstairs hobby room which is substantially occupied by train layouts of different sizes and scales and associated work benches.

 

Now I gather that what you originally meant was, have you built a MODEL of your house to put on a layout? Actually, I did build a crude cardboard model of a preliminary house design before I built my actual house that I occupy now. That model helped me decide to build a similar but wider house plan.

 

Anyhow, it just goes to show how phraseology can be interpreted in different ways.

 

My house of trains is currently in serious disarray due to other diversions ...

 

Ace,

 

I changed the thread title to eliminate that confusion.  Thanks for pointing it out.

 

Maritn

I would absolutely LOVE scale models of my house and several others I (or family live(d) in).  I just don't have the modeling skills.

 

I have seen magazine coverage of hobbyists who have done this, but haven't done so myself.  I think it's a great idea.  Of course, there are people who will custom-build structures for you.

 

Walt, yours are so gorgeous I'm speechless!  I can't begin to imagine the hours you must have put into them.

dk,  I think you are right.  CSXal is the guy I was thinking of that I saw first who had done it.

 

Nice work there Walt.  Ihad no idea you were doing it too.

 

I think CSXal is making turn tables now too.  Is that right?

.....

Dennis

I don't have the patience to custom build anything.  But I've saved this website to check out: http://www.yourhomeonyourlayout.com/html/custom.html

Yes, CSX Al is making turntables. I think his company is called "Millhouse Studios". Also, he did build a model of his own house. He posted it somewhere, along with an actual picture of the real house, and you can't tell the difference. Absolutely a fabulous job. Oh if only I had the ablity and patience. Hopefully Al will see this thread and repost the pics, they are worth seeing again.

 

REV

Here is one of our store

Walt: those structures are very nice, thanks for posting.

 

Martin: I've never thought about building a model of my home, but I've always wanted to build a model of my grandmothers home and some of the other smalltown structures where I grew up. The link below shows some work of some fellow O scalers work that gave me the idea. If you click the link below and go to page 10, you'll see some interesting scratchbuilding.

http://www.oscalemag.com/docs/ost_38.pdf

Travis,

 

Thanks for the link to that oscalemag document.  That article looks like it will be very helpful when I make my attempt at building.  Good details and tips in there.

 

 

Martin

I will be using all 5 on my 2012 Christmas layout.  Here's what I just finished last night - Rapp Avenue leading into Waltburg

 

-

 

walt

 

 

 

That layout just looks like a whole lot of fun!

wow the one house looks like the mansion of the town. 

Martin,

I built a model of my father-in-laws house and gave it to him for Christmas one year. It was a ranch house he had built himself. My wife got the plans and I used Evergreen styrene and Grandt Line windows to construct it. I built it in 1/4 scale using the plans. He opened the box on Christmas Eve and had tears coming out of his eyes. My wife had me make our house the next year and I built my Moms house for her the year after that. I also built a house from a Thomas Kinkade painting for my wife on the Christmas afetr I bought the painting.

Just go out and get approximate measurements and layout and cut the parts using the various Evergreen patterned styrene sheets. You will have a blast.

 

Alan Graziano

Thanks for the encouragement Alan. I was looking at the grandt website earlier today, checking out their oscale windows. I will have fun doing this!

my dad modeled his house he grew up in years ago and its perfect to the gutters. but he is a landscape architect.  I should commission him to do more!! 

Here is the one I did.

 

Here is the roof.  I gained much more respect for my contractor after building this!

 

That is awesome, including the roof! Is that you in the front garden? I want to put a figure of myself in the front and I have a recent-model 1:50 ford f-150 to paint the same color as mine. That will go In the driveway

This is your lucky day:

Futuristic Photo Booth 3-D Prints Your Portrait

Hi Martin H, Do it for sure, whether you craft it yourself or have somebody craft a family home for you, it is a very gratifying presence to have on a layout, IMHO. Everybody loves to see such a personalized landmark.

 

Here are ours, in Moon Township: our house (I try to keep the vehicles and the foliage current [just like you asked about] as time goes on); my wife's childhood home (that is she as a little girl in a red coat reaching up at the door; her father behind her, still on the sidewalk); Alan Graziano's mom's house (I liked it so much when I saw his model of it I begged him to build one for me, too!); our uncle's house, next to the model of my wife's house (and yes, when I presented it to her one Christmas, the tears did flow - from both of us. She actually recognized it as she was extracting it from its wrapping, just by seeing the roof alone, first).

 

This is a hobby loaded with sentiment and memories from the past, and new joys in the present, so having a model of one's home is a perfect fit and well worth the effort/investment.

Frank M. of LR

 

Our home...

 

...my wife's childhood home (the white one in the middle of this shot)...

 

...from L to R, along the foreground, my wife's house; our uncle's house; Alan's mom's house...

 

..our house in the background of this photo; our uncle's house in foreground (he's standing in front w/ his children represented at much younger ages, along w/ his favorite car,) left of Alan's mom's house...(I hope he won't get angry at me for sharing it with you, here, and giving him his due credit)...

 

...a side view of Alan's masterful craftwork (art-work, truth be told, IMO) of his mom's house....

That's supposed to be me jogging (in MUCH slimmer and peppier days) down the street on my way into my wife's life with her at the door of her house a few steps away...

Moonson,

That whole neighborhood is stunning.  Thanks for the very personal tour.

Cheers,

David / Monsoon..........Just plain fabulous........you both have something very unique, and special.

 

REV

Wow, that is quite a neighborhood! Mine is pretty basic, just a Model Power house painted to match the full-size version with a scratch-built barn. I had to switch the position of the structures on the layout due to space limitations.

I've had a model of our house on the Choo Choo Barn layout for years.  Rich Melvin even points it out in our DVD.  I built it off our original blueprints and have had to add two additions to it.

I also built a model of the house that I grew up in in Strasburg as a memorial to my mother and father, the originators of the Choo Choo Barn.  I built this in 2003.  And yes, that's the color it was in the 1950s.  Imagine growing up in a "pink", flat-roof house.  It was very modern in its day, very Frank Lloyd Wright-ish. 

 

Prior to him taking our trains from the basement and opening the Choo Choo Barn, my dad owned a painting and decorating business and our house had a showroom attached which is the section with the turquoise windows  The garage housed all of his equipment.  I reproduced the the sign he had on the outside wall.  I have the Sherwin-Williams sign to add yet, hopefully that will happen in 2013.  I also added the American flag at the end of the front sidewalk which flew 24/7 (he was a veteran of WWII, wounded in Anzio) and my mother always had marigolds along the walkway.  I've been searching for a 1/43rd scale 1954 Ford station wagon and panel truck because they were his two work vehicles.  If I ever find them, I'll paint and decal them and put them in the driveway.

Beautiful and charming, Tom Groff, both houses. You have much to be proud of.

Frank M. of LR

In all the years I've enjoyed model railroading, this thread touch me and moved me.  Wonderful work!
One question, if I build my old house do I have to mow the lawn and get my ex wife back?  I guess that's two
questions.

Jim,

 

I bet everybody here would love to see Leslie's log cabin and/or the Pennsylvania house.

 

Dave

To John Albee: Only if you like country music.

I am super impressed at the GREAT modeling you guys did/are doing!!!  Thanks for sharing the awesome modeling pictures!

 

- walt

Jim, set the cursor at the bottom right of each picture and hit the enter key a couple of times. That will separate them.

 

Thanks for posting those wonderful builds.

I thought they were real houses!  wow  amazing.  unbelievable job. 

 

Chris

When I first saw this thread, my thought was that this was way too hard, I could never do this.  While that's probably true, I see that several of you could do it!!  Congratulations, very impressive!  I'm formerly a CBL operator and currently a trains in boxes and bench-building guy.

It's not as hard as it looks, especially if you have blueprints of your house.  Most prints are drawn 1/4" to the foot so most of your work is done for you.  Just transfer your wall dimensions onto whatever you are going to use for your walls and start cutting.  For the house I grew up in, I actually used foam core board and backed it up with 1/2" X 1/2" pieces of basswood on the inside on the top and bottom of the wall for strength.  I also used some scrap aluminum right angle pieces for corner braces to make sure my corners are straight.  I have lots of photos of the process.  I used basswood strips for the window frames.  I painted the entire structure with a thick artists media to simulate cinder block and then painted it with acrylics from A.C. Moore.

 

 

They're all beautiful!

 

I've created a measuring stick that I place in front of a building that I want to model. It's four feet long with white and black electrical tape at 1 foot intervals and the last at 6" interval. I put it up to the side of the building when I take the picture. I use a digital camera of course. I import the picture into Corel PhotoPaint and correct the vertical and horizontal perspective distortion. The I import the picture into CorelDraw as a JPG or Bitmap, set the scale to 1" = 48" and then put some horizontal guidelines that are 1 inch apart (4 scale feet). I then enlarge or shrink the imported drawing so the 0 and 4 ft marks on the measuring stick touch the two guidelines. I then know that the picture is now in O'scale.

 

From this point, I put the picture on its own layer and turn off the editing of that layer and I'm able to make my working drawing directly over the picture of the actual building. O'scale buildings are big so it may have to print out on multiple pieces of paper (or larger sheets if your printer can handle it.)

 

While there still could be some distortion, you can make some pretty accurate models. The old fashioned way to do this was take the measure of something known, the height of a door for example, and then determine the sizes of the rest of the building. My way eliminates the guesswork.

 

Here's a view of my old house in Pennsylvania that I'm going to model some day. You can see the measuring stick in this picture.

 

This is a model of my childhood home. Its constructed with Evergreen clapboard siding and Grandt Line windows.

Wow. Spectacular. It'sperfect, Richard E. You have more than a model there, though; there is a happy, peaceful atmosphere one can feel, IMHO. And I love the neatly cropped hedge, just like we had along our home, too, way-back-when.

Frank M.

Thanks REV for the kind words. I missed this thread, so a bit late but here is the model I did of my house.

 

 

Here is the model

 

Here is a photo with the scenery done around it.

 

Here is a link of the how to on my webpage

http://home.roadrunner.com/~st...zphoto/Ourhouse.html

 

 

This is the model of our house that I built last winter.

 

 

 

 

I really like this! And it inspires me to make sure that I do one of our previous home, and maybe this one. The roof line on the former was much simpler than this one has. Now all you have to do is say "Betelgeuse" three times and see what happens. Could be fun...

My grandfather's old house, the color has changed but you get the idea

 

 

 

 

 

I plan to do so on my current O-gauge layout.  Up through 2005 my N gauge layout had an entire scratchbuilt subdivision of every home my grandparents had had, the various houses the various houses I lived in growing up, the four houses I have owned, and each of the houses owned by my sons.  Interestingly, I had a Faller car system garbage truck that would run and stop up and down the steets and a school bus that would drive through it, too.

 

The house I currently live in nowis the one nearest the lower left corner below

My dad ran a research drilling rig for Amoco in the '50s and '60s so we moved around the western US alot, living in fourteen houses in thirty years.  I modeled them all, many of the earlier ones below.  I never lived in one, but the Trailer Park on the right, but is the favorite thing I have ever built for a train layout in any scale.

Our modular club has a model of Henning's Trains, they're the sponsors of the club.  That's close, right?

Evrery bit of that is beautiful and a wonderful idea. I salute you for your creativity, prodigeous skills, and well honored memories, Lee!

FrankM.

I built a model of my house about 10 years ago. It sits in the living room on an old Singer sewing machine.

 

Alan Graziano