Bungalow Bodgery

Years ago, back in primary school, our class topic was buildings. A friend of mine told a story of how he thought the Bungalow had got it's name, when housebuilders ran out of bricks and the foreman just told them to "bung a low roof on!" Whatever the truth, it came to mind when working on this project...

This is a project that doesn't really fit in anywhere in my longer-term plans but has acted as an effective time-occupier, having off and on for many months. It nearly got thrown in the bin earlier in the year and has only really come together properly in the last fortnight. The starting point is the Dapol C027 Detached House kit, this particular example having been acquired at a toy fair for a couple of quid.

Somewhere I had read that this kit could be converted to a bungalow and I was intrigued to have a go...

Aside from the obvious conversion to single storey, I have added a 3mm strip of material to the base of the sides, largely to give a footing that could be buried in the ground rather than to add any extra height. Elsewhere I have adopted a principle of refinement of the kit parts wherever possible. For example the chunky window frames were thinned by sanding them against a flat surface, then adding opening frames from strips of 5 thou styrene. The doors were given frames from Evergreen strip, and panel lines scribed in, door handles and letterbox etc added. Doors and windows are presently loose to aid painting (blu tac is holding them in place for the pictures).

One window on the right-hand end was made smaller as it conflicted with the chimney stack. This was nothing to do with cutting the kit down, even the original upper storey had this issue! The join can just be seen but I think paint will hide it.

The main chimney stack has a new top with Wills pots and a strip of Slaters bricks towards the top to add relief, the shorter stack is half size as I only had one half in the pack and had to double-up. This has a MicroTrains truck pin as a capped stack.

Working on the roof nearly ended the project, the moulding was poor with little lumps all over it, as does the one on the Dapol website so this may be a damaged tool. Sanding this smooth destroyed a lot of the detail and I ended up scribing it back in (not my greatest work). I also removed the half-row of tiles from the bottom edge as they looked ridiculous! This destroyed what there was of a gutter so guttering and downpipes were later added from the Wills building accessories pack. These are a massive improvement visually. The kit roof lacked any capping strips so these were added to all joints, scribed from 10 thou styrene.

Of course, in best DIY fashion, there are a few bits left over...

Some of these will go into the bits box, even those chunky window frames might come in useful somewhere as they are accurately moulded shapes. The more damaged bits of wall and failed modified windows are likely to go however, you cannot keep everything!

Colin