Medieval Hut ( How to )

Quick and easy...and cheap as mud :-)

Medieval hut or stoneage or fantasy or whatever

The Materials.....Green insulating foam, sharp blade, scissors, stapler, pins, woodglue and some paint and some thin card (the sort from a cereal packet is good. You also need a handbrush or a softbroom (not shown in picture)

Cut a strip of insulating foam across the lines. if the strip is cut along the lines it doesn´t bend easily..in fact it snaps. Using a biro score the brickwork pattern. Do not cut out the door at this point. Glue the whole thing to a base and hold in place with some pins. The join at the back will need pinning as well.

Here I have smeared some sand mixed with woodglue on the basing. Leave the whole thing to dry.

The roof. Mark a circle on some card, cut out and cut a line to the center. lap one side over the other to form a flat cone and fix in place with a staple.

Put the cone over the house and cut back (remove the bottom) as necessary so you end up with about 1cm of overhang all the way around. At this point you can cut the door out. If you do this earlier, it creates a weak point in the wall which almost immediately will break when you start to bend the wall into shape.

Then I paint everything in dark brown. if a door is going to be added you don´t have to paint the floor inside. If the doorway is left open and you don´t paint the floor it looks a bit odd, as if  the owners are burning logs that produce a fluorescent green glow. Either that or witches have set up house.

Shade, highlight or whatever. It´s a good idea to paint the roof as in the pic. If left just dark brown it can show up through the thatch ...Oh yeh...glue the roof on!! :-D

Cut bundles of bristles off the handbrush / broom. These should be about 3-4 cms long. Smear some wood glue on the roof and then dip one end of the bristle bundle into the glue.

Attach  the bundle to the roof, spreeading it  flat. Keep going around until one layer is complete, then add another overlapping layer and so on.

Let the whole thing dry..trim the thatch to tidy it up a bit..add flock or whatever....finished.