This Old (Resin) House

My eyes needed a break from close-up painting work, so yesterday I treated myself by painting up some buildings.  I managed to finish this well-known tavern, La Belle Alliance, so that at least the boys will have some refreshments available when waiting for their turn to slap around Matt's 74th Foot.

 

When I was back in Vancouver earlier this year, I had taken the opportunity to sort out the closet full of wargaming items still in storage at my parents' place.  In the process, I came across a bunch of resin buildings of what are pretty much unknown origin.

Definitely useful for our games here, so I promptly had them shipped back to Tokyo.  I bought this one at the old Sentry Box West gaming store many, many years ago.  It may be an old Gallia model, but I wouldn't swear to it.

 

Regardless of provenance, it was designed for (back then, true) 25mm figures, and is on the small size for 25mm at that.  As such, it actually scales out very well for both our 20mm and 28mm games, as for the latter it does not take up such a large footprint on the tabletop.

It had been very simply block-painted for fast service on the tabletop, and was in this state when I bought it back to Japan.  Since then we've used it for both Napoleonic and WW2 games.   

You can see it as it used to be in the centre left of the picture below, from a game we had last autumn.

Basically it is still a good model after all these years, so I decided it was worth tarting it up a bit.  So I gave it a fresh new coat of paint and placed it on a wooden base, taking the opportunity to go for a new blue slate tile roof instead of the original dull red.  I thought this would make a nicer contrast with the brickwork.

Attaching it to its new MDF base proved  more difficult than I anticipated as the model did not sit flat on the table.  But I used lots of epoxy and a sand/ PVA mix to build up the baseboard and to fill in any gaps that appeared along the bottom edge. Worked like a charm.  I then painted the base in a raw umber and flocked it in.

"Alors, right now a glass of claret would go down well, mes amis, Non?"

Oh, and when working on buildings and terrain, I go through paint like a frat party goes through cases of Schlitz.  I really appreciate those Ceramcoat craft paints, which remain very economical for this kind of work.  

All told, I think it looks great, and Bob Vila and Norm Abrams would be proud.  I have a few other buildings which need the same treatment, too.  I'll be working on them between my miniatures.