Shoe's 30 for 30, day 29

They're less dark in meat space.

These aren't especially complicated but there are two of them and they're painted.  For context, we're going to get in the WaBac(TM) machine to the beginning of February.  I've been Proxxoning for like two or three weeks and I stumble across BMC's Medieval Cottage.   I built two of these, pictures lost in the mists of time.  The originals were a pain to build and more of a pain to paint.  They were buildings #2 and #3 that I'd built out of XPS as I started tenuously exploring this medium.  Today (well, yesterday) I revisited those same builds with all the stuff I learned since then.

I think I'm getting the hang of this.

The stonework was done with a pen and I glued these together with PVA to keep the seams neat.  I mostly succeeded.  Remembering all the trouble I routinely have with painting these guys and the fact that they don't often read well from the table, I made the stones extra big.  This also made them easier to draw.  If you count the chimneys and hearths texturing took about an hour per building.

The pitch on these roofs is exactly 45 degrees on purpose.  At this scale I don't have to do anything weird to get pieces of the correct size.  I made two changes in construction this time around.  First, I glued my interior braces to the roof and the pieces of roof together before gluing them to the wall.  I've been in the habit of gluing each piece to the existing walls first.  For big pieces this is really painful and I ended up with some pretty serious gaps and other faults as a result.  Second, I textured most of the shingles on the build.

Build complete!

I used to texture shingles before cutting them and stopped because it was a pain.  The static charge you get on foam shingles by running a wire brush over them for texturing is significant and they aren't very heavy.  As a result, they'll frustrate most attempts to keep them together.  I started as normal and about the third time I had them fly all over my workstation while moving my bin, I decided to texture and cut as I went.  I found my cutting was more accurate and the long strips don't generally have trouble fitting in bins.  I think this is a win and as a bonus, I think they look much better. 

So here are my two new farmhouses.  Total build and painting (not drying) time for both is right around four and a half hours.