As you might be able to tell from the post title, this might not be such an interesting post. It deals mostly with the roofing. I'd already made the chimneys and just needed the slate shingles installed so I could glue the chimneys to the buildings.
We started with thick cardboard, not quite chipboard but of a similar thickness. I like the cardboard that comes in 'crate' boxes, used to divide up the box and cushion the bottles inside. It's sturdy and with the thickness it looks like stone.
I measured and cut and cut and measured until I had a bunch of 1 1/2 inch wide lengths. then cut them into shingle strips. I typically leave a half inch strip uncut so I can shingle ten or so inches at a time.
Once the strips are cut into shingles the shingles are then snipped off at various lengths and angles so they don't look uniform and perfect.
Only then are they glued to the roof boards.
Since the Blacksmith doesn't have much of a fancy house I decided to forgo the bargeboards and wrap the 'slate' over the edges of the roof. The roof looks thicker and slightly more rustic than the WQRC.
So far so good, right?
Then we start painting so I can have that worn and weathered slate look. I started with black paint. I have several different simple blacks in various brands and I just started with one and kept going until I ran out and needed another bottle.
I did all this on Saturday after gluing shingles the previous weekend. By the time I was done painting I was reassessing my need to build second story homes since it required a lot of standing. Clearly I need to think about just building ranch style homes.
But on Sunday I began to paint with my greys. The first coat was Anita's Acrylic Charcoal paint. I tend to dip my brush in, add paint to the highest level of shingles and then drag the brush down to the bottom. I tip the brush in water and dilute the paint with it, dragging downward again until I get a streaky kind of cover.
Now and then there's too much water and a touchup with black paint is required to cover the cardboard that is showing. But as methods go this works pretty well for me.
The second layer of paint is Americana Grey Sky and since it's much lighter its best to apply the paint sparingly or have a very wet brush before dipping it in the paint. It can go very light very quickly and then there's a lot of blotting and mixing darker paint in.
Best to just be careful of how much paint is used and not go through all that.
