Castle Destro (Landscaping)

A few months ago, I completed my Castle Destro. The project took almost a month to complete and the step-by-step construction details can be found here. While I was still quite happy with the castle itself, I've recently came to realize that something was missing - scenery. So, I set about brainstorming for ideas on how to add some scenery to the castle. Eventually, I decided to use the empty shell of the "Ugly House", a large dollhouse I made a few years back for my children's Ugly Dolls. The kids lost interest in it after a year or so, and the house was used for various different playsets over the years. Most recently, it had been gathering dust in a corner of the basement. Anyway, I decided to set the castle on top of the Ugly House so that the top of it simulated ground level and the rooms below would be like secret underground caverns - which would more than likely be found underneath Castle Destro, right?

08/28/2011 - Right away, I went out and picked up some Woodland Scenics artificial grass, coated the top of the Ugly house with spray adhesive and sprinkled the "grass" on. It looked great, but if I'd had any prior experience with the product, I would have waited to apply it. I very quickly realized that adding other terrain was going to be somewhat difficult without messing up the grass. But, you live and you learn, right?

08/29/2011 - I knew approximately how I wanted the project to turn out, but I wasn't sure how to get there so I decided to ask my fellow Iron Grenadiers at HissTank to help brainstorm as a way of getting new ideas and also poking holes in ideas that ultimately wouldn't have worked well. One of the best suggestions I received was to add a moat around the castle's perimeter. I began the moat by scraping away the grass in the area where I wanted the moat (see? I should have waited for the grass). I then painted the "bottom" of the moat with three different colors of brown. While the paint was still wet, I sprinkled some sand and loose dirt on to give it texture. In order to keep the "water" in the moat, I needed to build up the walls of the moat a bit. So after the paint was dry, I applied a thick ribbon of wood glue to the outside edge of the moat. While it was wet, I alternated sprinkling sand, dirt and more of the artificial grass on the glue to make it look sort of like shoreline. The moat is only about 1/8 of an inch deep, but I really only need enough depth to hold the simulated water while it dries. To fill the moat, I had planned to use the type of synthetic water used by model railroad enthusiasts. But to fill a moat the size was planning would have quickly become very expensive. So I decided to use hot glue sticks! My master plan is to melt a bunch of glue stick in a pot and then pour the melted glue into the moat. Because it dries clear, I figured the bottom of the moat should still be visible. When all was said and done, the glue dried a little foggier than I expected, but it looks pretty good. After the moat was dry, I scraped away more of the lawn so that I could put in the driveway. This was done using spray adhesive and sandy dirt. The whole driveway was then watered down using a spray bottle. I rolled my Razorback and some other vehicles over it a few times and was rewarded with very distinct tire tracks. The driveway was then sprayed down with a water/glue mixture to keep it in place. Here's a shot of the castle as it will sit when the whole project is finished.


















09/19/2011 - Obviously, I got a little sidetracked on this! Anyway, I finally got back to it today and built the drawbridge. I installed it with a couple of small hinges and some chain. The chain runs through the plexi-glass door and can actually be used to pull up the bridge! The drawbridge is a bit wide, but it would have bothered me immensely if it was too small to allow a D.E.M.O.N. in and out of the Castle! The moat got a bit of touch-up in the form of border stones. The stones were fixed in place with hot glue. I was deliberately sloppy with the hot glue, because I found that it looks like water between the rocks. I'm not done with this yet, but I'm a lot closer after today!