Hartley House: Part 4 Finished Model

Below are photos of the finished 25mm Old Glory's Harwood House (MW-102), the residence and office of the town's mayor and physician, Doc Hartley. (In the second photo, you can see him defending his property from a bandito.)

All the building needs now are some interior details, which I'll add over time. As soon as my neighbor has some free time, we're going to make a base out of thin plywood for the building as well. This model needs a nice flower bed with a white picket fence.

I enjoyed the project, which really took only about a few mornings of labor. As I mentioned in the earlier post, I still would recommend spraying the building white instead of brushing it. This would have cut my work time significantly. Also, see my earlier posts on tips to make the roof fit the building and add how to add some fancy roof posts instead of the dowels that come with the kit.

Up next is one of Old Glory's modular Western buildings, one of their 'tent' buildings, a bridge, the finished OK Corral, and some out houses.

Hartley House: Part 3 How Many Coats of White?!?

Another quick progress shot of the house from Old Glory taken at 10PM last night. Only the roof and two doors remain unfinished. The big lesson I learned is that if I ever paint another white building, I will spray prime it grey and then spray it white. That should save me tons of headaches. Painting a white building by brush is not fun!

I also learned to plan my colors ahead of time, even before I prime the models. Yes, an idealistic thought that I most likely will forget by morning.

Interior Paint
The interior is painted Americana Williamsburg Blue (DA040), one of their older colors. This is a great shade of blue, useful for buildings and figures. It thins well and covers black in one coat. Highly recommended.

BTW this afternoon I kept telling my wife that I was "painting the house" and had to get it finished. No time to talk. She didn't buy it. Though a couple weeks ago I actually did do some interior painting in our real house--really spruces up a place easily and cheaply! But I digress....

Hartley House: Part 2 Fresh Coat of Paint

Yesterday and today, I've been painting Old Glory's Harwood House from their OK Corral set. This is what it looked like at 10 AM this morning when I shot the photo--partially painted with lots more work to do. The last time I posted about the building (here), I had fixed the manufacturing problem of the sagging roof and had primed the building black.

My goal is to make the house look newer and belonging to Gun Town's leading citizen, physician, gunslinger, and mayor--Doc Hartley. (In real life, he is our neurologist and loves Westerns, decorating his office with cowboy paintings. I've also renamed this thread in honor of him.) I want the floor to look newer than my other buildings and have the outside painted a nice, new coat of white. Below you can find my paints and comments. I like to use my blog as my online painting notes.

Wasted Time Making Mistakes
As you can see, I have made my share of mistakes while painting. First, I painted the area grey where I wanted to paint white. That makes sense because white doesn't cover black very well. Plus a grey base makes white pop more. For some dumb reason, though, I figured I'd paint the inside trim white. I made that decision after trimming the walls black after having painted the floors. Then I decided that I was not being too smart and decided that the interior trim would just be the wall color, whatever I paint it. So I re-trimmed the trim black this morning. Just a bit of confused wasted time and effort! (I worked on the building to take my mind off my dad being in the hospital, so my mind wasn't totally on my modeling.)

Paints For Newer Floor Look:
1. Americana Honey Brown (DA163)--a nice color but a bit thin. Not that good for figures but ok for buildings. Heavily "wet" drybrushed over black primer.

2. Americana Fawn (242) lightened with Ceramcoat Ivory (2036). Ivory was on my table, so I used it. Made the Fawn look lighter and warmer than just adding white. Fawn is a basic craft paint everyone should have. No idea how Ivory paints on its own--I just bought the bottle yesterday morning. Drybrushed.

3. Ceramcoat Ivory as highlight. Very light drybrush along edges.

Grey Base:
Americana Grey Sky (DA111). One of the best-coating grey craft paints. Very light but covers in one coat.

White Walls:
Americana White Wash (DA02). Just a bit more washed out than regular white. Thinner than I like. OK for buildings. Needs two coats at least.

Hopefully, I'll work on this some more on this building this afternoon.

Hartley House: Part 1 Building a Better House

The 25mm Harwood House from Old Glory's Western buildings line, pictured here from their website, has always had a problem that Old Glory knows about but cannot fix. The bottom off the roof is poorly designed, so that when you place the roof on the building it will literally fall down around the walls. In their website's photo, the only thing holding up the roof are the two dowels and probably some Photo Shop magic. Getting the porch posts to fit the bottom edge of the roof would be difficult due to poor casting, with little space along the roof edge as the photos will show.


Fixing The Roof
A while back, I came up with an easy solution you can see in the photo. I used a piece of thin plastic left over from an item we bought at the store. I have no idea what it was any more, but it came from one of those items that has a clear window letting you look in the box. I cut the plastic to fit the bottom of the roof and then glued it in place. In other words, I created a new bottom for the roof. No more falling off the building for this roof. Of course, I forgot to do this before I primed the building last week. Figures! We had a clear, dry day here in Central Florida, and I was so eager to take advantage of it that I sprayed the building, forgetting that I had to work on it first. Oh well. No harm done.

Adding Porch Posts
Guess what? I have finally added porch posts to one of my Western buildings! It suddenly looks like a real building with a real porch. Old Glory supplies dowels with all their Western buildings, but I really don't like them. Most posts in the real West would have been square instead of round, which cost more. Still, this being a residence I decided to use some balsa wood dollhouse posts I had gotten a couple years ago on sale. (Dollhouse stuff is great.) I cut the posts to fit the roof, drove a size #20 pin into the base of the post, drilled a hole into the porch floor using a #72 pinvise drill, and then glued the entire assembly into place using Zap-a-Gap superglue. Worked perfectly. Of course, I should have done this prior to priming last week! Oh well again. The posts are straight but look a bit off due to the angle of my camera.


Final Thoughts
While I like the building, it had a great deal of thick resin flash between the window openings. It was very difficult to remove since I don't have a Dremel tool (that will be changing soon!).

Later this week, look for photos of the finished Sheriff's Office and some newly painted Western figures. The project is really moving along. I'm even looking into building my own structures. After 35 years of wanting one, I am about to buy The Chopper wood cutting tool! Until next time...