Another Building

I had so much fun with the Bakehouse that I decided to do another building, this time a bit smaller and simpler. I wanted some very rough drystone huts, inspired by this; 

"Four tumbledown one-room houses of un-mortared stone surrounded an empty sheepfold and a well.  The houses were roofed with sod, the windows shuttered with ragged pieces of hide"

Clash of Kings p185

I remembered the Sod Houses in the old 'Tragedy of McDeath' warhammer pack and thought these might be about the right size and shape. I don't think they made it over to the Warhammer Townscape set, but I still had copies of my original, and I even found my first attempt at building one of them. 

One of the sod houses from McDeath made, as was all my terrain at the time from thick card covered in filler.

There are two different huts in McDeath that do duty for the clans in the first game, the malters in the second, and the orcs and goblins in the third.  I chose the smaller as a base to see if my ideas worked. 

The walls are made from offcuts of XPS foam. When I make some more I'll cut pieces specially, these pieces were slightly different widths and in some cases of varying thickness. 

I traced the plan onto the foam, cut it out with a sharp craft knife and then glued it, pinning it and putting rubber bands round it to keep it square (ish).

I glued some card on the top to help keep things together for the texturing stage.  This will come off later as the original has a timber frame below the roof, so I'll add some balsa. 

Once the glue was dry I drew on a very rough stone pattern with a pencil, then cut into the foam along these lines. Then I deepened the gaps with a sharp pencil. 

I textured the foam with a ball of foil, but I felt it still looked too flat. So using a filing stick I pushed some of the stones further in and also rounded the edges to make the stone look more worn. Now I think it looks pretty good. 

I'll need to give the whole thing a coat of modpodge to strengthen the foam.  There are some bits of balsa to add for the various wooden features.

Then I have to think how to model a sod roof.  Has anyone done this?  If so, please share your techniques.