St. Jennifers - a Catholic Church for my City

St. Jennifers Church, along with its garden, being staked out by the Hilltop Highlanders -- one of my 28mm gangs

Last month, I attended the Dragon Guildhall's Saga Game Day in Beavercreek, Ohio (Dayton area). The hosts (thanks, Adrian and Jim!) were very generous and gave Jenny and I each a store gift card for making the trip. I decided to buy a Pegasus Hobbies building kit (Gothic City Building Small Set 2) for a church for my 28mm city I'm building. I'm really happy with how it turned out, though I did modify it a bit from "out of the box."

The Pegasus Hobbies boxed set that I constructed St. Jennifers from

The first thing I noticed is that there were few to no instructions on how to put it together. When I opened up the box, there were a bewildering array of hard, gray plastic pieces. Just looking at did not tell me how to construct it. There was one small sheet with three diagrams for specific portions, but no general, overall directions. So, I did what every 21st century gamer does when confronted by something they don't know how to do -- I Googled it! I found a couple videos on YouTube which were useful. One thing I would not have figured out how to do without the videos was to attach the doors to the entrances. Once attached, it is VERY cool how they built it so you can swing them open and closed even after painted.

This is a TALL building, as you can see from the 28mm figures, but detaches in an upper and lower section

The video was fairly thorough, though when it said there are plenty of extra pieces it was dead wrong. You are given j-u-s-t enough pieces for all the various details, like gargoyles and such. One decision I made was to NOT use the flying buttresses. Those are simply too medieval for a 20th century building in downtown America. There are plenty of old, Gothic, neo-Gothic, Romanesque -- whatever -- church is the U.S., but I've yet to see one that has flying buttresses (a term which makes my 7th graders giggle every year when I teach them about Gothic cathedrals!).

My scratch-built roof with its lovely shade of tiles -- the Pegasus kit does NOT come with a roof

Another thing I discovered that the Pegasus set doesn't have is a roof. Really. It is open to the sky. Yes, you can configure it in different ways, so that you could argue that you'd have to include multiple roofs, but that reason falls short a bit for me. I would say that, besides no instructions, that was the biggest shortcoming of the set. Luckily, I am fairly adept at scratch-building. So, using textured styrene, bass wood, and craft sticks, I was able to make a fairly nice looking roof for St. Jennifers -- as I decided to call the church. I have been naming my city buildings lately in honor of my gaming friends, so the church was obviously named after Jenny.

I really like the color and the details on this building -- and apparently, so do the Hilltop Highlanders!

The first step was putting it all together. It snaps together fairly well, but some joins aren't as good as the others. So, I decided to epoxy all the pieces in place permanently. The video suggested disassembling it and reassembling it every time, which was clearly an indication that the video blogger has succumbed to madness. I assemble each of the two levels, and immediately noticed the top story does NOT "easily snap" onto the bottom, as claimed. So, what to do? I decided to saw off the square "tongues" of the tongue and notch construction. Instead, I would put rare earth magnets on the top of each pillar of the bottom level. Where the top level would rest on the pillars, I cut flexible steel bases I'd ordered by mistake from Litko (thinking I was ordering magnetic bottoms for my figure bases). These were glued to the bottom of the pillars on the second level and the magnet and steel join is strong enough that the top level won't slide or move if bumped, but not so strong that you have to pry them apart.

A side view showing all the cool gargoyles and eagles that you can attach onto slots in the pillars

Next, I attached all the trim, which included gargolyes, eagles, knights, and flat blank pieces. There are numerous rectangular holes or slots on the exterior of each pillar. Since I wasn't using the flying buttresses (they also attach to the slots), it meant I actually didn't have enough trim pieces to cover all the holes. I improvised and used some tiny crosses that I'd bought at craft stores to cover the holes on the front and back. My first thought was to put the flat pieces on the bottom level and the gargoyles on the upper level. However, each level looks very much alike and I lost track of what I was doing. So, their are gargoyles and eagles on both the upper and lower levels. I really like the way Pegasus designed this aspect of the model. I just wished they'd given extras of each type, so you could go with all gargoyles, or all eagles, or all flat pieces, etc.

A gang member going in for confession? The doors are richly decorated and swing open and closed after painting

For the church's color, I decided not to go with a gray stone look like the box shows. There is an old church in downtown Columbus (Trinity Epsicopal, I believe) which is done in a beautiful tan-colored stone. I wanted that look for my church, so I knew I would have to paint the interior and walls -- I couldn't use the gray color the plastic was cast in as a base coat. I began by spray painting the interior and exterior of the walls with a medium brown acrylic spray paint I had. Once dry, I brushed on medium brown craft paint that I use for most of my bases. Next, I dry brushed it with a "Fawn" craft paint color. I am actually out of my Howard Hues Khaki that I normally use, and probably won't get a restock till next month.

The stained glass rose windows are simply Google Images printed in color at the local print shop & trimmed to size

But what to use as a wash? I think that a wash over dry brushing softens the look, and kind of "blends" it. I haven't had the best luck simply mixing paint up and watering it down. Normally, I premix Vallejo matte clear with some brown (or black) for a final wash of my figures. It would take ll of my pre-mixed bottle and more if I chose that method, though. So, I decided to purchase and try one of Vallejo's pre-mixed washes, choosing a Dark Brown one. It worked great, I thought. It softens the hard brush strokes of dry brushing, and seeps into the crevices and low spots nicely. Good find! I'm glad I decided to take the plunge and try out their premixed washes, finally!

A look at the magnets I placed on the pillars of the lower level

Next, I built the roof. For the base of the roof I cut two pieces of bass wood to be the main sloping roof sections. However, due to the way the upper level is constructed, simply running them along the triangular eaves and resting them on the stone didn't work -- the angle was slightly off. I had to cut and attach another piece of bass wood to the bottom so it reached the roof and rested on it. Kind of two-tiered roof. To make sure my triangular angle matched the model exactly I attached the two pieces together with duct tape "hinge." That way, they simply fit onto the stone slope perfectly. I set this on the roof, and then cut two pieces of textured styrene for the actual roof surface, epoxying them to the upper sections of the bass wood roof. There was about an 1/8th inch gap between the styrene and lower tier of the roof, which I filled with craft sticks or other pieces of bass wood. I capped it off, literally, with a triangular piece of styrene from the local model train shop. An unexpected bonus was it fit onto the upper story so tightly I would not even need to glue it. I pulled it off again, and spray painted the upper section black. The roof tiles were dry brushed dark red, then Howard Hues Middle East flesh. I loved the color of the roof and am very happy with not only how it looks, but I especially like how well I was able to make it fit!

A look at the interior and textured styrene floor -- note the lamp you can glue onto slots in the interior

Next, I used another piece of textured styrene I'd picked up long ago for the interior floor of the church. I spray painted it black with Krylon arcylic mate, then dry brushed it medium gray and light gray. I epoxied it to the bottom level of the church. Next, I cut a thicker styrene base for the model to sit on and epoxied it to that, too. I flocked the stryene with blended gray fine ballast to appear like concrete, and I was done! Well, of course, I did a coat or two of clear matte arcylic spray for protection, but St. Jennifers was complete. It is a very tall building, but fortunately fits in the snap-together boxes I carry my terrain around in. I'm very happy with how St. Jennifers turned out, and think it will make an excellent addition to my 28mm cityscape!

I built the little church garden using Hirst Arts plaster blocks, Halloween decorations, a spare 28mm girl figure, and plastic fencing from the local train shop