Models of the houses you lived in?

TW Trainworx has done that. It says on there website "we have even modeled a client’s historically registered houses". I'm sure they would do it again. Give it a shot. Here'e the link to there website (Home): http://twtrainworx.com/index.html

The part that says about the houses is under the "Custom Layouts" page on their site.

I have lived in some that would be appropriate to the era I am modeling, but have

never had the inclination to do that.  Someone on here has, and displayed and excellent model of a house, and I think more than one, that they were familiar with.

Forum member Walt Rapp has done that for himself and his family....maybe he'll see this and respond. His work is museum-quality.

Peter

I just don't have room for houses on my O-gauge layout.  I may built a model of my current houses just to puyt on a shelf, though, it would be a fun project.

When I had an N gauge layout I had a subdivision of 47 homes: every house that I, my grandparents, parents, uncles, aunts, and my three boys have lived in, including present houses.  It was a lot of fun to model.  Here is a photo of one set of four I kept when I tore down the layout to go to O.  I had set up the Faller car system on the subdivision and had a tiny garbage truck that would go up and down the streets stopping every so often.  If was fun to watch.  

I am a custom model builder that would love to hear from anyone wanting a model of their house, any era. Visit my blog - just Google Tom Yorke custom model building. I have built two Southern Pacific depots, a sugar beat loader, a fire house, factory flats, farm house, old funeral home and many store fronts for clients in the past few years. My email address is tomyorke@bellsouth.net. Pictured is a photo of the old funeral home.

Try here.  I believe they display at York in the Orange Hall.

Your Home On Your Layout

I started this thread a couple years ago.  Should answers the OP's question.

CLICK HERE

My house done by;Your Home On Your Layout

Nice car in the driveway. I had a split level like that in Jersey. Had a nice train layout in it.

I sure Forum member Alan Graziano could do the model for you.

Joe,

Thanks for that. I will post a couple of pictures tonight of my own house and my in-laws house that I have constructed.

Alan Graziano

Thanks for those more-than-kind words Peter!

The link in Martin H's reply shows some, not all, of the models that I made. 

I've had offers in the past and I've turned them all down. It's humbling to think that someone is willing to pay to have a product of what I do for fun.  But since I am neither a professional, nor very artistic, there are times that I have to make a compromise.  Since it's always family members I explain the why of it and they're just so happy to see their house modeled that they accept any compromise that I make make.

If someone was paying me I could not in good conscious accept making a compromise, thus I prefer not to accept an offer, as complimentary as it might be.

But again Peter, thanks for the compliment.

- walt

I've drafted both the current Louisville house and the previous one in Bucks County PA. This house is all brick and the PA one was brick on the front and siding all the rest. I've purchased a lot of Evergreen clapboard styrene for it. But I may get Andre to laser cut both, especially the all-brick one. Both are being designed in Illustrator, but I did render the current house in SketchUp to develop all the roof angles.

The process to create this image was rather circuitous. It started with a few photos of the real house. These were imported into CorelDraw (now Adobe Illustrator), straightened and adjust to take out perspective parallax, and then traced and scaled to create 3-view drawings. These drawings were imported into SketchUp and placed to serve as starting points for each face. Then it was a straight up SketchUp project. 

Since I did this drawing I learned how to use a photograph directly into SketchUp to make a 3D image. I did this when drawing the distillery images.

From SketchUp, you have to go back to Illustrator to create accurate working or Laser-cutting drawings. SketchUp does have an add-on in their Pro version that enables working drawings to be produced in SketchUp, but SU pro is very expensive.

This sounds like a great project. I would like to do a few old abandoned houses as well...

And of course for talking purposes it would be cool to have a Blair Witch House! 

constructing custom buildings is not too big of a deal... I did the Mayberry Courthouse as well as Floyd's Barbershop from Andy Griffith. (all posted on this forum) I am now on building #10 from our Local Village...

There are a ton of options...it is all on what your budget is. I am doing my sisters house and a friends house next- use laser engraving.

I scratch build almost all of my buildings. First I photograph the buildings I think I would like to model and draw them on graph paper to scale. I use Poly Styrene and Precision board to model with. Poly Styrene comes in all sizes and shapes and is easy to work with. You can do this with your house....

I just took some pictures this morning of the houses that I have made for myself. I did not take the plexi-glass boxes off of them so the pictures may not be real clear. The first model is of a painting that my wife purchased. The other two our my house and my in-laws house. I have also constructed many houses for other model railroaders.

Alan Graziano

It was her first model she had ever built, of anything.  She is an artist and graphic designer by profession.  My response was "I have been doing this for 50 years, and I'm not even qualified to carry your gym bag."  

Among other interesting touches, all materials on the house are true to reality, e.g., hand-carved wooden gutters, aluminum downspouts, steel stair rails, etc.  There is also 1:48 trash in the trash cans, license plates that are true to our license plates, etc., etc.

There's a pretty good slideshow here of the entire building process:

http://share.shutterfly.com/sh...p;sid=0CcN2TFqxasXYg

For her next project, she will be building the centerpiece bridge for the layout.  When I mentioned this thread to her, she said, "Have them send me photos of their homes by email."

Yes, I have died and gone to heaven.

Steven J. Serenska

P.S. My favorite part is her work on the front doors.  We have an amazing cast iron grille that's original to the 1879 house.  She took a picture of it, scaled it down, and printed it on opaque paper behind some basswood for the doors:

Serenska just in case nobody else asks does she have a sister even if she is only half as talented. truely fantastic especially since it is her first model WOW!!!!!!

I have posted these before.  Here is the house I grew up in, and my elderly parents still live there.  The original house was built in 1888 by my great-grandfather, Cyrus Boyce.

i built this diorama in N scale 25 years ago.

All of this is very impressive and quite humbling. Serenska's girl friends talents are many and inspiring. I have those Xacto carving blades and rarely ever use them. And to think, I could be carving my own rain gutters. She's inspiring me to do more work and depend on laser cutting to be my salvation.

Mark, N scale really lets you build some large real estate. Until I put up the fire station, I just didn't realize how big 1:48 actually gets. It was a wonderful diorama.

Myles,

Thank you.  Yes, having spent so much time in Smaller scales, I am often surprised how much space everything takes.  However, I love the 1/48 structures and trains.  I just can't fit much in 4x8.

Yes, Stephen's girlfriend did a marvelous job.  The house has tremendous character, and has so many intricate parts.

>>>Serenska's girl friends

He hopes each one doesn't find out about the others.

I just happen to see exactly what your looking for.

Today we were visiting Hartville Hardware in Hartville Ohio and there was a small table set up in the entrance foyer with a finished house and information on obtaining one done for your house.

I'm sure if you call Hartville Hardware and ask for the information off of that table they can supply you with contact info.

Hope this helps

Wow Mark.  We do a lot of stuff that is amazingly similar.  When I first glanced at that I thought it looked just like my old N gauge buildings.  Very nicely done.  Good house, too, for a model.  Great!

I lived in this house in Merced, Ca. from September 2013 until February this year. My former landlord and his wife are holding one of my copies, which is now in the Philippines. I modeled the house as it originally looked in 1900.

Thanks everyone for their kind comments.  The house model that she made for me is truly extraordinary.  It is displayed proudly on top of the piano.

A few quick stories:

• My girlfriend more or less built the model in secret as a surprise.  We had only been going out about 3-4 months when she started in August and she worked hard to finish it by Christmas.
• Whenever I wasn't around, she would go outside and pace off the dimensions on foot.  She said she did this so I wouldn't catch her with a 100' tape measure and ask her what she was doing. She sized the relative height of the house by measuring to the top of the 1:1 cars in the garage, doing the same to two 1:43 models she purchased, and then extrapolating the result.
• At Thanksgiving, she took my sister and daughters into her confidence and showed them the nearly finished work.  My oldest daughter said, "Whoa, he's gotta up his game!"  My sister said, "Watch the big oaf break up with her before Christmas."  I sometimes forget how genetically similar these women are...
• On Christmas Day, I was stunned.  It was truly an awesome gift.
• Months later, when we were clearing out a closet to make room for some of her things, we came across a full set of blueprints for the house that were done sometime in the 1980s when renovation work was done.  We both laughed but also nearly cried at how much work it would have saved.

When compared to the blueprints, the model turns out to be about 2 inches too tall (i.e., 8 scale feet) which is a shame because the house is big to begin with and, in its oversized state, it dwarfs much of what is on the layout.  Frankly, I am proud of it where it is, on the first floor on the piano where everyone can stop by and enjoy it.

It was fun to go to the Big E train show in Springfield, Mass the first year and watch her be on a first name basis with the staff at Evan Designs (forum sponsor) because they had helped her with the interior wiring of the LEDs.

As we are building a large 32' x 24' layout on the 3rd floor of the house, we constantly have to compromise over just wanting to get trains running (me) and wanting everything to be detailed and to scale (her).  I have said to her, if we build everything to the level of detail of the house model, the grim reaper will beat us to the finish line on this project.  The compromise is to first do Layout V1.0 which will include track, wiring, Plasticville structures, Scenery Express scenery (e.g., walls, portals, grass mats, etc.) and then build Layout V2.0 over time by improving every 1' x 1' square of the layout until it's worthy of her modeling skills.

When we were discussing the layout plan, she zero'ed in on an 8' bridge that I had planned to make using 2 of those nice 2-track MTH ABS girder bridges along with the small 1' extensions.  She said, with a straight face, "Don't you think that people from this area, who walked in and saw the layout, might be drawn in if they saw a model of the Mt. Hope Bridge?"  

The Mt. Hope Bridge is a suspension bridge about 1-2 miles from our house and it's gorgeous:

My only response to that was, "I think people would be knocked out by a model of the Mt. Hope Bridge.  Please, let me just get out of your way."  I was later able to get the full set of drawings used to construct the original bridge which will make her job considerably easier.  I can't wait.

And, yes, I do realize how lucky I am.

Steven J. Serenska

P.S.: Here's a picture of me holding the layout plan below.  She asked me to blow up the RR-Track plan to 3' x 4' in size and then she had it mounted on foam board. It will go on the wall in the layout room at some point.

Good luck with the layout Steve, and you live in a great place to inspire scenery.

Alan Graziano

Thanks Lee!!  Yes, the place has a lot of character.  I would like to get back to doing some buildings and scenery in O gauge, but I need to kick our 24-year old daughter's boyfriend in the caboose to pop the question, so they can get married and I can get her 12x12 room. The Boyce homestead would take most of my current 4x8 itself.  For now, it's just small stuff.

BTW, I said my parents are elderly.  Dad is 84, He mows over two acres with a walk behind Gravely that is as old as me, and he has been replacing some of the concrete walks the last couple of years.  Smashes up the old himself, and mixes the new by hand.  Every time I ask if he needs help, he says I have my own work to do.  

 Every time I ask if he needs help, he says I have my own work to do.

Mark:

God bless him.  We should all hope we're the same way at age 84.

SJS

Amen!