This is the third in a series of posts about carving a little whimsical house from an old cedar fence post. See Carving a whimsical house, Part 1 for the introduction.

In Part 2, I finished carving the roof. The next thing to do is establish the roof line and gables, and carve the sides down in preparation for the doors and windows. To that end, the first order of business is to draw the roof line similar to this:

I use a Typhoon “bud” burr, shown on the right, to cut the roof line in the wood. If you
don’t have that particular burr, a flame shape or a taper would probably do just as well. This line doesn’t have to be terribly precise; just be careful not to carve away the roof.

The picture on the left shows the house after I’ve cut the roof line. You probably noticed that the bottom line looks like I cut it with the same burr. I might have. That bottom line, by the way, is where I’ll carve the rocks that the house sits on.

The next thing to do is carve the space between the roof and the base relatively flat so that the roof overhangs the house. I’ve used several different burrs for this and still haven’t decided which one I like the best. The 9/16″ Typhoon that I used for rough shaping the roof works okay, although it’s kind of hard to get the middle portion. However you do it, be careful not to go too deep. Also don’t worry about getting it perfectly flat. At this point, the most important part is to carve down the triangle that makes the gable on each end.

Above you can see that I’ve carved the gables, and then drawn lines to outline the trim board that serves to separate the wall from the gable. The next step is to relieve that board by carving down the wood above and below it.

Carving away the wood below is easy enough: just outline with the “bud” burr and then carve the rest of the wall. Carving the gable is a bit of a pain. I’m still experimenting with the best way to do that. If the area is large enough, I’ll use the bud or a flame shaped Typhoon burr. If it’s smaller, then the ruby carver seems to work pretty well. However I’ve done it, though, I’ve not been able to get a good sharp line. I keep trying.

Here’s what my house looks like after carving both gables and the walls on all four sides.

Again using the Typhoon bud burr, I roughed out the rocks that make up the base of the carving. I probably made a mistake using that large burr for this, because the resulting rocks have too much space between them. I had to do a lot of smoothing and shaping work to get it to look even halfway decent in the end. Live and learn, I guess. I would suggest taking your time with a ruby carver or perhaps a long taper Typhoon if you have one. In any case, something smaller and less aggressive than what I used.

After I finished roughing out the rocks, I spent a little time with the flap sander to smooth the walls a bit so that I had a reasonably flat surface on which to carve the doors and windows. If you don’t have a flap sander, a sanding drum will work as will any other burr that leaves a relatively smooth surface. The surface doesn’t have to be completely free from scratches, as you’ll be cleaning it up later. But you probably want something pretty flat for the door and window frames.

Next time: doors and windows.