Terrain- Building 8- Boulangerie

Boulangerie

This is the second building that I have completed from a set produced by a company called Game Cult on eBay. The first one I finished was my church, and these two were the stand-out kits in a multi-kit set, and as a result, are the ones I've completed first. 

I like the multiple levels of the roofs and the archway on this kit. It made the building a little bit different to the boxy nature of quite a few MDF kits you can buy, and it got my imagination racing as to the possibilities I could do with the kit. As always, I wanted to extend the footprint of the building and included a yard. I've made a few of these now and am reasonably confident now. I also wanted to cover the kit in brick paper to tie it in with a set of terraced houses from TT Combat that I had just completed and thought worked really well. (I'll post the terraces soon, but wanted to show this building first because I think it's really cool...)

An interesting feature of Game Cult MDF kits is that the building is not split into floors that lift off individually, rather the back wall of the kit slides up and out on guide runners once the roofs are removed. You can see these in the pics below. It's not as awkward as I first thought it might be, and it also allowed me to attach a drainpipe to the back wall that didn't need sectioning to fit to individual storeys of a more conventional kit.

The exterior stairway is actually the one included in the kit to put inside the building. I chose not to use it that way because I don't want extra clutter inside when I place troops. Instead, I thought about using it as an external metal stair leading to the upper floor. The door at the top is one I fashioned from cardboard bits and bobs, which covered a nice blank space in the wall- perfect for a new feature. 

The yard is surrounded by foamboard walls, just like the ones I've made for my other buildings, capped with cardboard tiles. The paving stones in the yard are leftover sheets from when I paved the yard of my hotel- it took a bit of jiggery-pokery to make what I had left fit the dimensions, but I covered any joins with moss and 'weathering'.

The gate into the yard is made from coffee stirrers, like all of my gates, with card and wire bits to make hinges and handles. After looking at all the rounded ends I'd snipped off to make it, I thought I'd have a go at shaped ridge tiles across the roofs. It was a bit fiddly to attach them, but I'm happy with how they came out- they definitely add a little extra to the building.

The archways have stones over the top to break up all of the red brick and gives them a bit of definition, and the chimney top is a couple of Lego pieces, as per... 

Decorations include posters and shop signs lifted from the collections I've downloaded online, a wall-mounted lamp by the back gate from the Rubicon street furniture set and a clock mounted on the front of the building that I free-handed onto an oval MDF piece that pushed out of another kit and was lying around in the 'bits and pieces' tub for just such an occasion.

I'm really pleased with how this came out. I plan to have a cobbled road piece connecting to the back of the arch, so the side gate opens onto the roadway. Traffic can pass through the arch and connect onto the road in front of the Boulangerie, making it a bit more interesting than just a normal T junction. With buildings either side, this will make for some interesting set-ups, I hope...