Painting old model buildings

The old Airfix (now Dapol) building kits have been used by railway modelers for many years. Old completed ones can often be found second hand at exhibitions. Often they are just poorly painted, using unrealistic gloss paints. 

Many modelers still use enamel paints, but I have used acrylic paints for many years. I prefer them mainly because being water based they dry quicker and brushes can be easily cleaned in water. 

When I was running a model shop , I kept myself busy on quiet days building and painting models and kept a jar of water to wash brushes. I soon realised that there was a lot of discarded paint accumulating in the jar so experimented using this to weather the models. I found that wet washing could be as effective if not more so than dry brushing as as it was using washed off paint was not costing anything, but it could be messy. 

I then had concerns about acrylic paints and found that if I primed a plastic surface with household acrylic primer paint, I could then paint over it using low cost emulsion paint, which can be bought in small sample/test pots. 

I found some old plastic buildings at a recent exhibition, all in reasonable condition, and all at a very reasonable cost. 

Photos below show initial state.

Church
Cottage
Garage
House
Inn

The next step cleaning up and priming.

The church is a good model to start with.

A simple coat of household acrylic primer

A simple coat of paint(emulsion paint)

and then weathered, and windows glazed using Glue n Glaze

other buildings weathered and glazed