A Warbases grub hut for my Vikings

Well this week I found an old MDF dark ages hut kit that I bought from Warbases yonks ago. The kit (here on Warbases website) is just twelve laser cut pieces, including a simple door and door-frame with etched wood-grain detail but for three and a half quid you can't really go wrong. I decided to customise mine a little so armed with a google images search for "grub hut" and "grubenhaus" I applied a little extra detail.

The first thing I did was to add a little exterior framing, using old ice lolly sticks (I am addicted to Fab lollies so I always have a few strawberry flavoured sticks lying around). With the grub hut being such a simple dwelling I opted for the classic cross at each end with the door frame against the cross on one side. This was easily done by splitting the lolly sticks along the grain to make roughly equal width rustic looking planks which were glued in place using PVA. I didn't use the door frame that came with the kit as the framing would provide two sides of the door frame and it was easy to add a third to fit the door.

Front of the hut showing the door frame and its new owner.

 Once the framing and the door were in place I applied a good coat of rough filler to the walls, letting it dry slightly and then dabbing it with a damp bristle brush to make it look like rough wattle and daub or plastered cob construction. At the last minute I remembered to leave a gap at the top, these things didn't have chimneys and windows, just a smoke-hole under the apex. When this was done I painted everything in white gesso before staining the woodwork in raw umber, followed by a black wash and a drybrush with cheap cream-coloured acrylic. The white of the walls was washed in raw umber and black mix and then heavily drybrushed back to white with gesso. When this was done I gave it a coat of matt varnish and turned to the roof.

Back of the hut showing the simple cross frame.

Thatching the roof was a problem, I tried the old method of using fire-clay but it doesn't seem to be the fire-clay that I used back in the 70s, it cracked and barely set properly. I scraped it all off and then after trawling the net I found an old terry towelling facecloth and cut it up to fit. The only tricky part was making sure that the nap of the towelling went in the right direction, once that was settled it was just PVA glued on with a separate couple of strips at the top to look like ridge-thatching. One heavy coat of gesso later it was starting to look like thatch. When it had dried for a day or so I painted it all black with cheap craft acrylic and then dry-brushed up with raw umber and cream. The final effect looks reasonably lifelike.

Close up of the terry towelling thatch

So for the princely sum of £4 (I had to replace the washcloth but it was only 50p from Dunelm!) I have a rather nice humble dwelling for my Vikings to raid. I really like these simple MDF shells for buildings, if I had to make the basic box from card or foamcore it would probably still be on my to-do list rather than sitting finished on my shelf.

More Vikings next time...probably.