Thursday 24th June 2010

Town Square #2: Wedding Chapel

On Tuesday the second kit in the ‘Town Square’ series arrived. Unexpectedly it was the Wedding Chapel, which was a nice surprise since it is advertised as being the last in the series. To the left is a scan of the photo of the model, that comes with the instructions. The kit comes complete with wallpaper for the interior, landscaping material and kits for two pews and a lectern. The small items like crosses, raised floor and steps are all packaged separately too, and every small package is clearly labelled. These kits are only little but they have a lot of detail. They don’t go together in five minutes, believe me!  Here are the contents of the kit, with the photo of the finished model of the chapel at the top.

Pretty as the wallpaper is, I have never yet seen a church or chapel that is wallpapered and somehow just cannot get my head around it so I am going to depart from the instructions here and do the inside walls with a more realistic finish. I debated whether to do a stone finish inside and out but in the end settled on a plaster-type for the inside and keep the boarding for the exterior.


This involved a rather different approach to the usual. Since the windows are just glued onto the interior wall I first marked their position and and drew their outline in pencil. I also marked the position of the raised floor. Then I glued the carcass together. Hint here: having done one shop before, don’t be too confident – check the angle at the top of the wall before you glue it on. Don’t ask how I know this vbg!

When the walls were attached to the floor it was time to glue on the siding, or weatherboard as we call it in Australia. I cut out the door and windows as per instructions then trial fitted the door and windows and found that considerable adjustment was required so they would fit properly into the weatherboard. This includes the top part being wider than the lower part. I was using a brand new blade in the scalpel and that made it much easier than I expected it to be. At first I had felt rather intimidated by the curve at the top of the windows but by using very light strokes as the instructions say and carefully following the lines I had drawn I had a base to build on and could gradually work further down and carve the shape I wanted, fitting the window periodically as I went until it was right.

Hmm - the photo really does show up all the imperfections.  It doesn't look too bad in reality vbg.

A hint here – my front siding did overlap the front of the side pieces, even though the instructions say that it would be the opposite. The corner trims cover it all up of course, but if you cut the front a bit short you would have a gap there - not earth shattering but probably a nuisance. 

The corner trim went on, then the roof pieces; and the Lego and masking tape came in handy again to hold that together.

I departed from the instructions again and did the bell tower at this stage, while waiting for the glue to dry on the chapel roof.

Once the basic walls and roof were put together I ‘plastered’ the interior, leaving the marked areas as clear as I could. I did this by adding talcum powder to the paint and after some experimenting settled on a pale creamy colour. After all, we want to have a pretty background for all those wedding dresses and their colourful bridesmaids , and for the flowers that will go in the chapel too. I had considered doing this part before putting the walls up, and it certainly would have been easier if I had done so. Once it was covered I went over with it using a brush in a stabbing motion and getting a textured appearance that I quite like – a bit rougher than I had wanted, but let’s just say it’s rustic lol!


While I had the cream paint out I did the eaves and edges of the roof in cream. Then to carry on the rustic theme I went with my husband’s suggestion and did the outside in terra cotta mixed with a bit of cream to make it lighter. And here’s how it looks so far, first the exterior:

Here’s a shot of the interior. As you can see, I went over the window area a bit in places and will have to scrape some away when it is time to put in the window.

Then it was time to search my resources for some nice stained glass pictures to put behind the windows.  As I said at the beginning, putting these little kits together isn't a five-minute job by far. But they are fun, and very good quality.  Hopefully I'll get it finished on Saturday night.