Building The Hartwell Tavern Part 3: Painting the Buildings

 

  Now that the buildings are done its time to paint the kit.  The restored tavern is a dark brown in color.  It is not painted but stained.  Some of the trim over the doors and the caulking around the glass is white.  There is a field stone foundation which is gray in color.  

  For the main brown color I stained the building.  This has worked very well for me in the past.  I use Arax Earth shade From Citadel Paint for this.  If I want a dark shade I brush it on right out of the bottle.  For a lighter shade I dilute it with water.  For the tavern I used it right out if the bottle and brushed it on, two coats.  I then slightly sanded parts to give it a worn look.  But very lightly and sparingly.

  Next was the roof which I painted gray to represent the slate shingles.  I think  next time  I will invest in the pre made shingles sold by "TFTB" which are reasonable priced.  the chimneys were painted A dark red brown then dry brushed light red.

To paint the trim and field stones I tackled it each building at a time.  Time consuming but the end result is worth it.

You don't like my sign?
Then get off my lawn you darn kids!

  The final piece is the tavern sign.  On the downloaded instructions there is a Xerox of the original sign which you can cut out and paste on.  I decided to try and paint the sign myself.  How well it turned you you can be the judge. Personally I will not give up my day job.  And the noble looking horse looks more like a big dog.  So perhaps use the xerox instead!

  When done you have a beautiful model if the Hartwell Tavern as it looks today.  This is a very big model and scale wise will take up a lot of your table space.  Possibly better for a one on one skirmish game.  Also remember that only the tavern was in existence in 1775.  So you can put just the main building on the table.  The additions could be set up as a separate building. So you two buildings for the price of one!

Personally I am most pleased with this.  As I mentioned I spent a lot of time here during my time at Minute Man National Historical Park.  Its a excellent model and it was great fun building and painting it.  Come April when I traditionally do a few posts about April 19, 1775 I plan on using this as a back drop for a few stories.