Avalonian Countryside Cottage

[LordDan]

In the meadows and forests of Avalonia live many folk who lead humble and peaceful lives. In this case, a young woman lives alone with her trusty cat  in this cozy cottage.

Thanks for viewing! I built this as part of a collab with my lug for an English Cottage Garden, and I built the central cottage. I'm not entirely happy with the plain baseplate as the base, but that is the style we went with to integrate the parts together. It also has an interior built by my friend, but it is more modern style so I decided not to include it here. Comments and feedback always welcome 

This is the reference photo the build is loosely based on 

 

[Grover]

Oh wow!  That's really interesting.  I have always wondered how to get a weathered wood look. That thatched roof looks like thatch from the texture, but I'm so used to seeing tan or dark tan, I immediately wondered if it was supposed to be slate tiles or something.  Looking at the picture, it makes me wonder if you could incorporate some DBG parts to change up the coloration even more to emulate where the roof has weathered.  I'm really happy to see this since I've always wanted to see LBG used like that.  Well done!  The Tudor stlying looks good, and I like your interpretation of the light blue shutters.  I think you did an excellent job with the density of the flora around the building too.  As for the square base, it doesn't bother me since I build like that for various modular things I set builds into.  If you had to take it to a show or something you might be able to build on an irregular base and then just set it on the square plate with a bunch of tiles under it and angle it a bit with one stud or something, but it doesn't detract from the build at all.  The dormer is nice, and I like how you textured the dark green below the lighter green.  It helps the eye see it as natural.  Awesome job!

[jtooker]

Thanks for the reference photo!  Great job matching the style.  The gray roof looked striking - even out-of-place, but I think that is my lack of thatched roof knowledge more than anything.  The shaping of the roof is terrific.   Your garden looks better tended than the reference one!

[Kai NRG]

I really love the black tudor on the A part of the wall, great angles.  The use of grey for the roof is also unique.  I partly like it and partly think it looks dumb   For what it's worth, I definitely think it looks dumb on the real cottage.  I wonder what it would have looked like in the LEGO version if you'd done a less-textured look.  Don't get me wrong, I love the texture, but it confuses what kind of material it's supposed to be, looks like thatch of an odd color.  If it were smoother it'd probably look more like slate, but possibly also look uglier.  It's a really cute cottage and I love the dense vegetation bunched up around it.  The empty baseplate edges look fine IMO, looks like a stylistic decision to fade out the vegetation.

[mrcp6d]

Great work on that roof texture, I like it a lot!  The grey is different, but it works IMO.  Half-timbered technique is on point here too.  

[LordDan]

On 6/30/2024 at 2:42 AM, Grover said:

Oh wow!  That's really interesting.  I have always wondered how to get a weathered wood look. That thatched roof looks like thatch from the texture, but I'm so used to seeing tan or dark tan, I immediately wondered if it was supposed to be slate tiles or something.  Looking at the picture, it makes me wonder if you could incorporate some DBG parts to change up the coloration even more to emulate where the roof has weathered.  I'm really happy to see this since I've always wanted to see LBG used like that.  Well done!  The Tudor stlying looks good, and I like your interpretation of the light blue shutters.  I think you did an excellent job with the density of the flora around the building too.  As for the square base, it doesn't bother me since I build like that for various modular things I set builds into.  If you had to take it to a show or something you might be able to build on an irregular base and then just set it on the square plate with a bunch of tiles under it and angle it a bit with one stud or something, but it doesn't detract from the build at all.  The dormer is nice, and I like how you textured the dark green below the lighter green.  It helps the eye see it as natural.  Awesome job!

Thanks for the in-depth response Grover! The roof is actually all DBG, but the lighting in the picture makes it look lighter.

 

On 7/1/2024 at 11:25 AM, jtooker said:

Thanks for the reference photo!  Great job matching the style.  The gray roof looked striking - even out-of-place, but I think that is my lack of thatched roof knowledge more than anything.  The shaping of the roof is terrific.   Your garden looks better tended than the reference one!

Thanks John!  Yea, the reference garden was a bit too wild and huge  

 

On 7/1/2024 at 1:17 PM, Kai NRG said:

I really love the black tudor on the A part of the wall, great angles.  The use of grey for the roof is also unique.  I partly like it and partly think it looks dumb   For what it's worth, I definitely think it looks dumb on the real cottage.  I wonder what it would have looked like in the LEGO version if you'd done a less-textured look.  Don't get me wrong, I love the texture, but it confuses what kind of material it's supposed to be, looks like thatch of an odd color.  If it were smoother it'd probably look more like slate, but possibly also look uglier.  It's a really cute cottage and I love the dense vegetation bunched up around it.  The empty baseplate edges look fine IMO, looks like a stylistic decision to fade out the vegetation.

Thanks!! As you and jtooker and grover pointed out the grey is pretty abnormal. From my understanding on the real cottage it is a thatched roof, where its so old and weathered it gets all grey and matted down. I was initially going to make it look closer to the reference with a less textured roof, but it looked super boring so I scrapped it.  Here's another example of a grey thatched roof I looked at when I was researching it. 

On 7/1/2024 at 3:29 PM, mrcp6d said:

Great work on that roof texture, I like it a lot!  The grey is different, but it works IMO.  Half-timbered technique is on point here too.  

Thank you! I like how the grey looks in the end too, it ended up giving the whole thing a black / white / grey color scheme that I think looks cool contrasting with all the colorful flowers and vegetation.