Spanish Town - Completing the first building

First building complete!

Last time, I said I'd talk about the church next. Well, change of plans.

I decided to completely knock out the smaller building with the colonnade first, before tackling the finish work on the church. (In the last post, I detailed the beginning stages of construction.)

First, the walls need a little touching up with spackle. This serves two purposes. First, it covers any seams that may be visible. Second, it gives the walls a little texture so they are not so smooth.

These are the tools of the trade, sort of. A pot of DAP DryDex spackling. I am sure any filler will do, this just happens to be what I had on hand. And a tool for smoothing and spreading the spackle.

Spackle ready to be applied

The spreader is what I am referring to when I say "sort of." I actually find the best tool to use is my finger! I just drop a glob of spackle onto the foamcore surface of the building, and spread it and smooth it with my finger. I try to make sure I push the spackle into any unsightly gaps. Also, make sure any lines or ridges in the spackle run in the same direction. I choose to make mine run vertically, but as long as you don't have them going every which way you should be fine. Below is a before/after picture showing the texture applied, and the seam between the building and the colonnade "magically" disappears.

Before (left) and after applying spackle

Once the spackle is fully dry, I take a small piece of sandpaper to the entire surface. This smooths any sharp edges and removes larger bits of spackle you may have missed while spreading. Be careful not to over-sand, as you don't want to remove all the detail you just spent so much effort to apply!

Once that's done, it's time for the painting. I used an ivory craft paint on the building, with a lighter and darker brown for the wood trim. I try to keep in mind this is a piece of wargaming terrain, and not a museum piece. I do not spend as much time or effort when painting this as I do, for example, on the troops that are going to fight over it!

Painted, ready for the landscaping

For the roof sections, all I did was give them a brown wash to bring out some detail. Then I took a bottle of terracotta craft paint I had and picked out some random tiles to break up the uniformity.

After that, all that was left was to add the surface texture to the base. As mentioned in my post on making desert terrain, I mix filler, paint and sand to create a mud-like like mixture that I spread over the base. Once that's completely dry, I just drybrush a couple of lighter colors over it to add some relief. And that's it - one terrain piece down, many more to go.

Up next, unless I once again get distracted by something else - the Spanish church (which I have named San Lorenzo Mártir).

'Til next time!