The Cursed House (and palms)

Front view - ground floor

I have made some progress to my "Cursed House" build (otherwise known as Stoetzel's Federal House) this week with the usual loss of a wall or similar occurrence. Work this week was however mainly held up by a bout of sneezing, coughing and bring up phlegm, as I developed a very heavy cold, all of which was not conducive to modelling, or my keyboard. Thankfully several packets of Lem-sips and hours of rest and I'm all but recovered.

Oblique rear view

First floor outside walls with internal prints

It should be fairly obvious that I've fitted the internal ground floor walls despite the model's best attempts to thwart me Why a single internal wall should be divided into three parts (the one from the front door to the back door) is divided into three .parts, escapes me - its' not as if it's too large for an A4 sheet, being only about 9" long!.
I also managed to cut and glue the internal wall prints to the external first floor walls (second floor if you're American) even managing to miss cutting out a pain of windows, before being laid low.

Left original, right 'worked on'

Succumbing to my current lurgy and not wishing to press my luck any further with the "cursed house" build it wasn't until Sunday I looked around for something else to do - something I couldn't easily f*ck up with a sneeze !
I decided to have a quick experimental trial at my palms.
Firstly let me say that palm trunks come in every shade of brown, grey and sandy-cream colours imaginable.
Secondly I now have a fairly large number of trees to 'spruce up' (no tree- pun intended) so whatever I do has to be quick!

Again, original on the left - not so effective as the previous one imo

Forgetting that as these are fairly soft plastic and should probably be washed in some luke-warm
soapy water I gave the leaves (fronds ?) a quick wash with Tamiya clear Green; the trunks were washed in some dark brown ink I've had for about twenty years and finally a bit of milky-coffee-coloured dry-brushing. IMO for the minute or so that it took I thought it was quite effective for a trial run.

Bottle palm - very happy with this

Imo, another success

Its a monster sized tree

 So the results are a bit varied with a few variations to the colours, brown greys or whatever, then I'm sure they'll look good en-masse. I'll also add a few yellowing leaves with some yellow ochre or similar washes. In the meantime here's a picture of one of my largest and most expensive tree at about 7" tall (175mm).
Also a late arrival to the jungle terrain were more plastic bits for my 'jungle', they're described as "flowering plants" om ebay and came form the same source as all my flora, namely "Model railway collectibles" -
They come in packs of either fifty or a hundred plants and either all of one colour or in five colours  (like my own)
I'm still awaiting three more packs to arrive - bamboo and two types of "grass" (in reality green bushes) 
It's hard to know what to do to 'improve' the looks of these flowering  plants, so maybe they'll be left as is (always my preferred option)

"Flowing plants"

The problems of not having a working laptop continue and  the proper space to use my desktop (I'm currently typing at 90 degree to my computer screen with my own shadow over the keyboard)  continue unabated but on the good news front I have the first of a half dozen or so shelves now erected in my wargames room, It's in the door alcove  and is now occupied by my Playmobil coliseum  of some 30"+ diameter. It's the first  step to clearing my table off and setting it up for a game!

That's it then for this week thanks for visiting and as always, your comments are both welcomed and appreciated.