5.12. Landsend Barn
Owing to its foreground location, I decided to make Landsend Barn extra-detailed by topping GCLaser's unfinished barn kit with their finished barn kit. But it wasn't quite as simple as it sounds, because the kits weren't designed to do this; it required considerable fiddling to make it work. In the end, the interior was virtually invisible, but the fun I had doing it made the effort worthwhile.
The unfinished version of the barn was modified to include an overhang over the lower level, as seen on so many barns in my area.
The sheathing had to be sliced and diced to cover the revised shape of the framework. A former door was sealed off and patched with some boards, and the siding was fairly heavily distressed.
I used chopped up pieces of cast resin stone wall fencing to make the foundation; I carved slots in it for windows.
The lower level of the barn was illuminated with a string of amber SMD LEDs, which created a nice warm glow.
Stock pens inside the barn were made with bits of laser-cut paper fence.
To create a classic standing seam steel roof, I placed heavy-duty aluminum foil over Evergreen styrene board-and-batten siding, and burnished the foil with a wad of paper towel. After bonding the foil to a micro-ply roof, I weathered it with Rust-All. RS LaserKits' Gregg's Saloon became a tractor repair shed. The area around the buildings was littered with details: cows, a farmer, tractors in various states of repair, a honey wagon and more.
