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After my father died in February 1988, I realized there were many things I wish I had asked him about his life. I then
thought that my children never knew my grandparents as my Gaston grandparents had passed away and only my grandmother
Westley was alive when my oldest daughter was 5 years old. I wanted them to be able to visualize what the old Gaston
farm house looked like and all I had was a few old photographs. So, I decided to build a model of the Gaston farm house. I
constructed the model in the spring of 1989 and took it to the Gaston reunion in June of 1989. It was strange as I had
not built a model "from scratch" before and all I had to go by was a few old photos and memories.
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Gaston model farm house built by David Westley in 1989 |
I constructed the farm house model from 1/4" plywood, scrapes of wood and popsicle sticks (trim)
and large kitchen matches (front porch lattice). I used doll house posts for the front porch posts and doll house wood
shingles for the roof, and doll house siding for the exterior. There were a lot of doll house items for sale back then
but they don't seem to carry as much as they used to at the hobby stores.
I used plexiglas for the windows and trimmed with kitchen match sticks and popsicle sticks. The old ringer washer on
the front porch is made from a napkin ring (the tube), clothes pins (legs), nails for the crank and roller and electric wire
stipping for the hose. I even made removable walls for the inside with a staircase to the upstairs, though I didn't
make an "upstairs" room. The "lightning rods" on the roof are paper clips and beads from a cheap necklace. The water
storage tank is an oatmeal box, and the windmill is constructed of small pieces of "angle iron" shaped aluminum. The windmill
blades were cut from plastic venetian blinds.
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Photo of model farm house with windmill and wind generator |
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