"AWI Buildings" Topic

I've pulled these two out of storage and I am preparing to base them. I'm good with the small wooden cabin, but I feel like I'm missing something on the larger stone house. Maybe paint the windows a different color? The roof? Some sort of wash? Something?

Suggestions from our master painters, please.

I painted these so many years ago that the Architectural Heritage building is an original and is quite solid. I do like the effect. I think that I may have sponge painted this building.

I've always liked the worn out, dusted look that I got on the small cabin. I'm happy with that. I think it looks good as it is.

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The last picture of the stone house is probably the best color representation.

I like what you have done here.

I would perhaps consider painting the frames white:

link

or this brownish red color:

or white

cliveden.org/the-chew-house

Stunning paint jobs though :-)

I think the brown windows are appropriate for the status of the farm house, while white windows might risk the building looking rather tasteful in a 'House and Gardens sort of way. I suspect that while white paint for window frames might be seen in higher status houses like Cliveden, even prosperous farmers might think white frames a bit showy and impractical. There may be regional variations to take into consideration. I may be wrong, but the darker frames certainly evoke another period to my mind.

The Doolittle cartoons/engravings of Lexington and Concord seem to show almost all of the buildings in the red oxide colour (the exceptions seem to be the sides of buildings facing the sun, and hence most likely are an attempt to differentiate light and shade). The Buttrick House in the illustration of the fighting at the bridge seems to be the only building that is obviously lime-washed.

link

On walking the Battle Road back in the 90s, I was curious to see the Merriam House done up in what was obviously a very faded dark green.

Fully painted exteriors became popular from the mid-1720s onwards. From what I've seen/read, the following colours would be the most likely to be found on buildings on a battlefield:-

red oxide
(untreated) naturally greyed timber – with/without bark left on
ochres
umbers and siennas
white-/lime-wash

About 30 common paint colours were being immported from Europe by the 1770s (you can see these in specialist paint manufacturers' lists), but – like tea – were mostly confined to the wealthier homes and to urban areas and their immediate surrounds; rural homes tended to be simpler. Greys, blues and whitewash became more common in the Federal era (1780-1840).

SC, that is very interesting. At what date did the oil-baed paints come into use that we might expect to see on exterior woodwork today?

The painted model buildings look fine to me as they are.

I recommend you leave them alone.

I agree about leaving them alone. But if you must, a very thin wash of a light gray on rock house might help it to blend better. Or it might ruin the fine job you already have.

@42flanker,

The use of linseed oil with exterior paints dates from the 15th Century in Europe, so I would guess it was known in Colonial America from the earliest times – certainly lime wash would have been used by the early Colonists, as it was in England (note that they would have washed the beams as well, the "mock Tudor" blackened beams are much more modern).

Flax was grown in Virginia from the 1620s onwards, but the nature of the plant is that it divests the soil of its nutrients very quickly, and could only be grown for 2-3 years on the same ground. thus it never became a cash crop in he way cotton and tobacco did but was sewn in limited amounts for local use only.

There is some evidence that milk and brick dust mixtures were used in the late 18th/early 19th Centuries, but the former may possibly post-date the AWI; brickdust was being used in Phiadelphia during the war.

So how thickly would lime wash be applied on exposed timber; and how long-lived? Was it more of a treatment than a protective coating as we see with oil paints?

Years ago I heard a presentation on colonial paint. If the cobwebs haven't altered my memory too much, I believe there were a number of bases for manufacturing paints that were readily available in the American colonies. The problem was that the tints for producing colors could be rather expensive. In most of the colonies lime and iron oxide would have been available. However just because it was painted once does not mean they would have kept up the paint job.

Add shutters.