In the picture above I have removed all of the structures, power poles, figures, vehicles and trees.
The picture above shows the module in place on my layout "Bear Bones".
Here I have brought the module into my hobby room to work on it at my workbench. I have the new houses in place to see if every thing will fit. In the remodel phase I'm replacing the Walthers Cornerstone plastic kit houses with my scratch built Catalog Homes from the early to mid 1900s.
The house on the hill was originally a Grandt Kit "No Problems Joe" house. It didn't fit in with my Catalog Homes So I'm replacing it with a Campbell Farm House Craftsman Kit.
In the picture above I have glued a Balsa base for each house to sit on, I used a level to make sure everything was correct. I have also added a thin coat of Paper Mache as a "filler" to mate the ground level to the house mounting bases. I now wait until the thin Paper Mache has fully dried before adding thickness. I learned the hard way that Paper Mache applied too thick causes warping, as it dries it shrinks and causes stress on the material that it is applied to.
Because of the shrinkage from the Paper Mache I keep the level handy and double check constantly for warping.
I went to a standard contact spacing or foot print for the power to my house lighting so they can be easily swapped for a different look on my layout.
This is one of my scratch built houses in place, the wet Paper Mache is the second thin coat or layer.
This house is a scratch built Catalog Home sitting in place.
This is my Retired Miner's house, it was a Grandt Kit house but the plastic roof shingles looked out of place next to my other houses. Here I have replaced it with a Campbell Kit house that "fits in". The Grandt Kit consisted of the main house, a storage shed or tool building and the outhouse. The shed looked like a toy building so I have replaced it with a small garage made from leftovers from Campbell Kits. I will keep the Grandt outhouse but replace the plastic shingle roof with a rusted corrugated metal roof.
The house above is a Laser Art Kit that turned out very nice. It is a model of a Sears Catalog House and that's what got me into building my own Catalog Homes. I can't say enough about the Laser Art Kit, the detail and ease of construction is extremely good. I did vary from the shingles that came in the kit, I used Campbell shingles so that they matched the rest of the houses on this module.
This picture is taken from the south east corner of the module as it would sit in my layout
I still have a long ways to go on this project but I'm happy that it's going so well at this point.
