So I have painted up the first three of my new houses, starting with three kits from Charlie Foxtrot Models in England. The Brasserie, Dormer House and Shed. These kits are pretty reasonably priced and come in pieces in plastic bags with a stapled cardboard header and a single sheet of instructions. The main structures are MDF with other bits and pieces being plastic, like chimneys, and balsa wood shutters.

My first impressions were excellent with nice clean bits of MDF which all fits together well. But the instructions are terrible. They could easily write and print much clearer and precise instructions. It must be the smallest outlay of the whole kit, one sheet of paper, but they have not given the modeller much help. So you kind of have to wing it. Luckily most buildings are just a box so you cannot go too wrong.

Armed with PVA glue everything fits together and the kits can be built quickly in an evening. Now as always with MDF kits i have to add and amend plenty of things to get them up to scratch. First up is a layer of plaster over all the outside walls. I did this on the Brasserie and the Dormer House. For the shed i coated in textured plastic sheet to look like stonewalls. You will need to sand the plaster to get it smoother. It covers up all those annoying MDF corners. I also added some tiled roofing, some pantile, some slate, as I really cannot deal with the MDF roof that comes 100% flat. You could also use cut up cardboard for the roof tiles. My last pet hate for MDF kits is the chimney pots. So i added all my own metal chimney pots I had purchased from an excellent model store in the UK.

Once I had made all these additions the buildings came up a treat I think. One last tip for doing gold letters for the Brasserie was to buy a gold paint pen from the newsagent. This made it much easier than trying to paint with gold paint which does not cover very well.

Even with all the additional work I think these Charlie Foxtrot kits are very good and measure up with other MDF producers like Sarissa. If you need buildings quickly and not too pricey check out Charlie Foxtrot