The Shack

This is a model of the shack from the TV show "Death in Paradise"

Death in Paradise is a British–French crime comedy drama television series. It takes place on the fictional Caribbean island of Saint Marie, a British Overseas Territory with a French colonial history.

The programme is filmed on the French Caribbean island of Guadeloupe.

The show centres around a British Detective sent to the island to investigate a murder. The detective is provided with accommodation in the form of a beach house, which a sort of a ramshackle affair which has seen better days.

I wanted to make a model of this building, as it seems a fairly simple building, and I thought popsicle sticks (lollypop sticks, icypole sticks) would be an ideal medium to use for the build.

Popsicle sticks

Recycled cardboard (AKA chipboard)

Matchsticks

PVA glue

Hot glue

I wanted to make a model of this building, as it seems a fairly simple building, and I thought popsicle sticks would be an ideal medium to use as the build. In addition, recycled cardboard could be used.

Preparation involved a lot of observation of the building whilst watching the show. This brought up a number of issues.

The oddly shaped piece at the back is actually hexagonal (more on this later), which I didn't realise at the beginning of this build. The shack is built on Anse de la Perle beach in Guadaloupe, which is where the show is filmed, and the hexagonal structure is actually a permanent structure on the beach. It's a gazebo of sorts, and there's about a dozen of these structures dotted along the beach there.

This presented me with some problems; the shack itself is built up against the gazebo thing in such a way that the roofline of the gazebo is partly inside the shack. So I was never able to determine where the main roof stopped over the gazebo roof.

There are several challenges with this build. Which version do I build? The structure has changed a lot over the years, with modifications made to suit various storylines. In the first series, the structure resembles a substantial garden shed, with a veranda at the front and a curious oddly shaped piece at the back.

In later seasons the veranda extends down the sides as well, and in the D.I. Jack Mooney seasons another room appears at the back (front?) of the shack.

One very odd feature is the fact that there is a tree growing in the middle of the shack. It actually extends up through the roof, although we never actually see this; we only see the trunk. The full tree growing in and through the building is only implied. We do see the upper part of the tree in some shots but it is never apparent that the tree is actually inside the building.

I elected to build the the structure as it appears in the Jack Mooney seasons, as this has the additional room at the back.

I began by determining the footprint of the building. In this, since I was going to make it out of popsicle sticks, and the shack itself is made out of large wooden planks, I decided to use them as the determining factor in the shack's dimensions. In other words, one popsicle stick equals one plank.

The height of the shack is nine planks, so my model will be nine sticks high. With that established, I could then go on to determine the other dimensions. The veranda is seven planks wide, so that is seven popsicle sticks wide.

Needless to say, the model has no actual scale, but with the planks to popsicle stick ratio it works out to about 1:24

Having determined the scale, and therefore the dimensions of the footprint, I made a base plate out of corrugated cardboard. Onto this, I fixed popsicle sticks to create the actual floor. I did this by applying a layer of carpet tape, then sticking the sticks down to that. I left the centre part free of the sticks since that would not visible in the final model, plus that gave me a line to work to when placing the walls.

The walls are built up from modules that I made by sticking the popsicle sticks to a cardboard backing. The cardboard I used was recycled from old vinyl ring binders that I had. They have a stiff cardboard inside to give them support, and I cut the vinyl away to use on another project, and kept the cardboard sheets. They are about 5mm (⅛") thick.

Once the sticks were fixed to the backing cardboard I cut them to the correct size using a bandsaw. Nine sticks high, and then 4cm (1½") wide. In addition, I cut some modules wider, about 8cm (3") for the gazebo thingy at the back. For the interior walls, I just used the cardboard as-is, since these walls would never be seen, and are there only to provide support.

The gazebo part has this lattice part at the top. I cut short sections of popsicle sticks and stuck them along the top of gazebo wall sections before assembly.

The oddly shaped piece at the back is actually a permanent structure on the beach, and the shack is built onto it. It's hexagonal, but I didn't realise this when I started the build. I only had the odd photographs and screenshots from the show to go on.

Anyway the upshot of this is that the gazebo part at the back ended up not being hexagonal. This doesn't really matter; you can't tell that it's not the shape it's supposed to be because of the way it's incorporated into the shack itself.

This part is actually down at ground level, so I created a separate section at the back for the base.

Once the base plate and wall panels were made, it was a simple task of fixing the wall to the base. I did this by fixing them with PVA glue, and holding them upright at 90° by using 1-2-3 blocks. I did one side wall at a time, then once the glue was dry, moved on to the next side. At the back, I installed the "plain wall", which is just cardboard. It has a hole in it to allow you to see daylight through the model once finished, as that is how the shack is constructed.

Like most aspects of this building, the colours have changed over the seasons. The veranda started out as a pure white, but by season 6 it looks more like driftwood. The rest of the building had a similar tone, and the veranda was toned down to match.

I elected to use a fairly thin wash of white in order to paint it. This was to give it the whitish, faded look of weathered wood. Later I came back with another white to which I had added a little brown, and applied a mottled effect over the white.

The odd part about the shack is the tree which grows in the middle of it. I wondered how to tackle this. You never actually see the tree from the outside; only the trunk of the tree is shown on the show.

I had some branches from a tree I pruned some time ago, and I picked a piece which was about the right size and stuck it inside the building about where it is shown on the show. I elected not to make the whole tree outside the shack, as there are a number of other features I have not included either, since I'm only making the shack for this build.

The veranda was quite a tedious part of the build. There are banisters all the way around the shack, twelve in all, and mostly different sizes. I assembled these from popsicle sticks for the top and bottom railings, with matchsticks used for the pickets. I assembled them separately, then stuck them in place with PVA glue.

There are many doorways in the shack - six in all, and five "windows". The windows are actually hatchways in several cases, with hatches that swing upwards revealing an opening with no glass.

I determined that the doorways would be four sticks wide, and since the doorways have two doors each - a kind of narrow French door - that means they would be two sticks wide.

The building has outward swinging doors, which are more like shutters, then inner doors which swing inwards. As I was building this I realised that inner doors would not be visible from the outside, so I omitted to install them. Why waste time building something that will never be seen?

The roof is of corrugated iron, so for this I used corrugated cardboard. I couldn't find any suitable, so I used a cardboard box, which I soaked in water. all the glue softened and the layers all peeled apart, revealing the corrugations inside. Once dry, these were suitable to use for the roof.

These corrugations would be too weak to use on their own, plus the roof has a profile, so I used more corrugated cardboard, this time intact, and built the profiles onto these, with the heavier card I'd used for the backings for the wall modules.

Prior to the installation of the roof, the panels needed painting. This was not as simple as it sounds; the roof of the shack is all different shades of red, from pale pink through to full red.

To do this, I used three different spray paints, white, pink and red. I simply sprayed the different shades over the cardboard in varying amounts until I got what I felt were the right variation in shades.

In order to complete the roof, I had to cut the corrugated cardboard into strips so that it resembled sheets of corrugated iron. This is so that I could apply the strips with varying colours so it looked like how the sheets are on the real thing. A red sheet next to a pink sheet next to a slight less red sheet and so-on.

Once done, I then applied the sheets to the backing board using carpet tape, in much the same manner as I had applied the popsicle stick to the baseboard to create the floor. After this, I found some corners were lifting here and there. I finished it off by sticking these down with PVA.

Like most aspects of this building, the colours have changed over the seasons. The veranda started out as a pure white, but by season 6 it looks more like driftwood. The rest of the building had a similar tone, and the veranda was toned down to match.

I elected to use a fairly thin wash of white in order to paint it. This was to give it the whitish, faded look of weathered wood.

Some final touches were: adding the steps that lead up to the shack, and the stumps, which is how the shack sits on the ground.

All in all, this has been an enjoyable project, and I hope you like this project also.

Thanks for reading it!