DPM Emery Lane build

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CNR Glen

Member
After working on the O scale Aladdin store it's good to get back to building in HO again. I got Design Preservation models Emery lane kit of the 'bay for about half the price that it would normally retail for and I've always left a place for it on my layout for it.
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The Emery Lane kit is two victorian houses and accompanying details. Both houses are quite small but I have found most DPM structures to be at least slightly 'compressed' so you can get the impression of a larger city or town in a smaller area. I would consider both of these houses to be almost improbably small in real life but they will be going on my layout abut 3 feet from the front so they could be considered background structures. I have also noticed that these are the only gold kits where the structures can not be bought seperatly as basic kits.

I started with the houses. I wanted the colors a bit on the brighter side since I model the late fifties. One will be blue, the other yellow.
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The buildings are typical DPM with the windows and doors cast into the wall and must be hand painted along with any trim. I airbrushed the yellow and blue, using Humrol paints. Humrol has an excellent line of flat paints that i like to airbrush on structures.
I then carefully brush painted the windows, doors and trim using a water based acyrilic white. The kit I got had been started with the previous owner who assembled one house, tried to paint it assembled, then gave up. I perfer to paint while everything is lying flat.

While I was painting I went through all the white-metal details (there's lots of them) and separated all the parts that would be painted white. These included the house trim, propane tanks and over thirty pieces of fencing. There was lots of Flash to clean up off the fence parts
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I don't know if this was an early kit of if all the kits have this much flash on the castings but it took me a couple hours to get the white parts ready for painting.
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I airbrushed all the white or predominatly white parts in testors white primer.
 
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I managed to assemble the walls and roofs of the two houses today.
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They fit together fairly well with minor glitches that only needed a bit of clamping to solve. I installed window glass and shades (colored construction paper) before the assembly.
The Roofs are just primered grey right now. I find it's easier to add the roof color after they are assembled. That and I'll be able to paint over any glue marks that show in the seams.
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I had a paint malfuction on the back of the blue house. I haven't decided on thier orientation on the layout yet so I decided to fix it by application of vines climbing the back of the house. These are made by dribbling full strength white glue on the wall, then sprinkling two shades of woodland scenics fine ground foam into it.
 
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I painted and weathered the roofs over the past couple days.
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I decided to make the yellow house a bit more maintained than the blue one. I greyed the roof on the blue one out a bit more to make it older.
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I also added the porches to the houses, there will be roofs to go other those in the future

The yellow house will also be to one getting the gingerbread trim while the blue one will be plainer.
 
I added the porch roofs and trim on the two. The posts, railings and trim are all separate white metal castings so again, there is lots of cleanup.
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I took a fellow modeller's advice and ran a black wash over the roofs. I think they look much better now.
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As i mentioned before the yellow house is getting all the trim. the upper trim on the porch was a bit difficult to add. The castings were too short for the longest section so I had to splice two together and then glue them in place.
 
The roof was painted Apple Barrel brown oxide and dry brushed with Ceramcoat mudstone (a nice driftwood tan color) Then it got the black wash over it while the house was tilted so the wash would flow into the shingle edges. All the paints were water based acrylics
 


Since the houses are pretty much finished Now it's time to work on the area that they will go
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They will be planted on the raised portion of my city by the backdrop/ so they will be seen. The raised part is made of 2" foam. I added the road going up in out of 1/8" plywood covered by polyfill from the local Canadian Tire (it's like a Lowes or Home depot) I'm waiting for the polyfill to dry before I sand it smooth) I also smoothed out the edges and joints with polyfill as well. I'll be adding stone or brick retaining walls to the vertical surfaces once I finish the road.
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I'm building up the houses and their scenery on another sheet of 1/8" plywood that will be removable so I can detail it on the workbench and then just slip it onto the layout. The sidewalk is glued to it just overlaps the road, hiding the joint. After this shot was taken I primered the base and sidewalk in grey
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Here's an overall shot of my city scene with the house 'module' in the background. it will be about 4 1/2' from the front of the layout but just as detailed as the foreground structures.
 
I finished up the road, block sanding the filler and then painting with woodland scenics asphalt paint. I also figured the final placement for the two houses.
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I'll be adding brick or stone retaining walls along the edges as soon as I track down some decent ones. Now that I've gone as far as I can on the layout I can take the base back to the workbench to work on the details and scenery.
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I traced the outlines of the houses on the base so I can mask off them off. I drilled holes in the base so I can wire lights in later. The next step will be planning out the fencing and a small laneway between the houses.
 
Looks great. The houses look great (much better than I can do), and thats a nice place on your layout to place them. I would do only one thing a little differently at this stage. Since the houses are on a small hill, and there will be a retaining wall on one side of the street, I would raise up the front yards( the entire section the houses sit on) just a little (maybe 1/8" to 1/4") above the sidewalks, and have a low retaining wall from the sidewalk up to the level of the front yard, and thus a couple or three steps up through openings in the low wall to walkways to the front doors. Then your narrow lane between the houses could slope up slightly from the road giving more of the impression that theres a continuation of a small hill there.
 
Coming along nicely!
While you're working on this you should be listening to "House On The Hill" by Audience!
 
Thanks Jim and Rico. I understand your idea but I have another plan to hide the backdrop seam behine the houses. Perhaps I should have said that it was a driveway instead of a lanewaybetween the houses and I do not plan to have it contiune into the backdrop.
I do plan to have the yellow house very nicely kept up (it is the one with the victorian trim) However the blue house will have a bit more of a 'red-neck' feel with the doghouse in the yard and a car on the ramps in the drveway. They even give you two different picket fences in the kit one with a bit more ornemental posts that the other.

(I'm been humming 'Pink Houses' by John Mellencamp and 'Our House' by Crosby, Stills and Nash!)
 
If you're going to use trees, fences and foliage to hide the edge of the backdrop, you might consider placing a small mirror against the backdrop and behind the trees with the top edge of the mirror hidden by the tops of the trees. Then when looking at ground level between the trees there would be the illusion of another yard and another house beyond the trees. I did that in one corner of my layout and it works nicely. In my case, I painted the trim on the back side of a house a different color so it looks like a different house in the mirror. Even if just part of the yard or house is visible in the mirror through tree branches, it at least gives more depth to the scene.
 
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I do have a plan for the backdrop, you'll just have to wait to see...

In the meantime I've been adding the scenery/groundcover to the base.
I started to set the fences around the houses to figure out the driveway going between them.
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I then masked off where the houses wil go and adding the base groung cover. I perfer Woodland scenics earth blend to start, then layer other gound covers on top and blend together.
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I added the grass lawns (using woodland scenics fine grass) that will be bordered by the fences as well as the driveway done using fine brown ballast.
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Next I can add the fences and other details
 
It's been almost a month since I touched this thread. In that time I'ver been gardening and away on vacation (it is summer anyway) But I also finished the build. Here's the finished pictures
Front View
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Back
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Everything that you see with the exception on the sidewalk and scenery came in the DPM kit. I used almost everything in the box on the project.

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The blue house with a full mailbox and plain fencing

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The yellow house with it's exra trim, slightly fanier fence and trellis over the gate. You can see the dog and fire hydrant, and the cat beside the birdhouse.

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A bit more detail of the yellow house's front yard. I painted the cat to look like my own cat.
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Here's the Housefrau hanging the laundry. The laundry is all small cast metal pieces (as are all the other details)
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Dog on his doghouse. I use Woodland Scenics field grass beside the fence to give the 'over-grown' look to the area

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Even a motorcycle and car ramps are included. I plan to find one of those Jordan hot-rod kits so I can use the ramps properly.
 
Absolutely outstanding! I hope I can do even half as well when I start adding structures to my layout.

- Jeff
 






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