After some thinking, I decided to build the small shelter for the swap project. Its design is not intended for extended exposure to the outdoors; rather, I built it as a display model for photography or for an afternoon steamup.
I started out by gathering my supplies back in May and picked away at the construction over the summer. I decided to build a plywood substructure and panel it with the popiscle sticks; I read that others were having issues with warping when using just the sticks.
Other than the plywood and some dimensional lumber, I had all of the other materials on hand: popiscle sticks (my wife Robin uses them for her garden), some 30 year old stripwood I had stashed away and some plastic vegetable garden markers for the hardware.
The following gallery shows the various steps of the project:
I spray-painted the main structure with Rustoleum Flat Red Oxide primer and then did a few washes of diluted Polly-S Grimy Black. The support timbers were painted from a 30-year old bottle of Floquil Grimy Black. The roofing material are Avery labels coloured with a wide black Sharpie marker.
I’m pretty happy about the way it turned out and hope the recipient feels the same.