I know we've got a few model railroaders in here, so I'd like to share the results of my latest experiment. I made a building "box" out of wood and used the wood as a guide for attaching styrene to make the building. That worked reasonably well, but the roof still had to be built from scratch.
In a related experiment, I made an 8x12 shed with gambrel style roof. That took a little more woodworking, but now I've got a decent looking shed that only took a bit of time to make. For a siding effect, I used a balsa stripper to etch lines to represent wood siding.
So a quick finishing question: If I shellac the wood before painting, are the grain lines less likely to show through the paint? I'm using cheap craft paint (Apple Barrel Colors that Walmart used to sell for $.50 a bottle) and pine. It took about 3 coats for the grain lines to be sufficiently hidden.
Puckdropper