FITC Tavern Part 1 - Planning and Mock-up

I've started work on the tavern, my entry in the First International Townscape Challenge (FITC).

I once tried making this building, many years ago when it was part of the Streets of Blood supplement. 

Back then I used really thick card scavenged from work (it was great building material, but hard work to cut details like windows, I wish I still had some).  I do remember I never finished it, making a mock-up reminded me why.

I've always been bothered by the design of the building.  The archway is nice, but seems a little redundant given that the building ends just after it, with only a thin wall.  I thought it might be better if there was another room beyond the archway, so I decided to add an extension.  With this in mind I decided to build a mock-up out of corrugated card.  This would allow me to judge the proportions of the extension I was planning, as well as have components I could measure to get the foamboard right when I came to cutting the pieces for the actual build.

I printed off a copy of the model and carefully measured it, transferring dimensions onto a bit of corrugated cardboard.  I normally do the pin prick method to get the doors and windows in the right place, but I wasn't bothered about those on the mock-up.

The original model has no internal strength to it, being just the walls that are visible from the outside. I decided to essentially make a long box for the main building and add the 'wing' to the end as an 'L' of walls; much stronger.

Problem; the end wall with the 'wing' needed an adjustment to the angle of the roof.  The 'wing' end wall, if the same angle as the other end wall, drops down to an unfeasibly low end for the 'wing'.  I decided a shallower slope would give a nice height to the wing, but of course I had to alter the other end wall as well.  

I remember having issues building this before, probably why I never finished it.  I think this might have been part of the problem.  I just couldn't get the walls to join at right angles, I wonder now if they are meant to be slightly askew?  After all, Medieval buildings are rarely 'true'.

At first I tried having equal sized sections on either side of the archway, but it looked a bit too neat, and rather large.  I reduced the size of the extension I was adding to be about the same as the wall visible up to the wing, which I thought looked better, and more manageable on the table top.

So now I know what to cut and how to assemble the tavern, though there may be some tweaking to account for the difference in thickness between the card and my foamboard.  For ease I went with a flat top to the archway, but I might cut the proper arch shape when I make the model properly.