Calamity - A failed painting attempt

I decided that I wanted to try a couple of model railroad products on the buildings for Calamity to see if I could save some time. Builders In Scale makes a product called Silverwood (and a couple of different colors as well), that can be applied to wood to create that aged silvery gray look to unpainted wood. I knew it would work on the Knuckleduster buildings because those are made from plywood. I was hoping that it would work on MDF and save me a lot of paint time. Well, it ended up just making the MDF a little darker or just soaked in a disappeared. I could kind of change the color but not in a way that achieved the result I was looking for. So on to Plan B.

One of the affects I want to achieve is that of old and peeling paint. In order to do that the wood has to be finished in the weathered wood look first. I was hoping that the Silverwood stuff would work like a charm, since it didn't I'm going to prime all of the buildings white (including the Knuckleduster buildings). Then I'm going to take black fabric dye (Rit Dye) and use that as a wash to create the silvery gray look. Since the fabric dye is still soluble at this point I can go back over it with some inks (burnt and raw Sienna) to get the look of newer wood in those places that are protected (mostly) from the elements.

After that has dried (and probably sealed as well) then I can start with the peeling paint effect. Typically western buildings are only painted on the sides that can be seen from the street and sometimes not even that so I have a lot of leeway on what I decide needs to be painted "in color". I'm still waiting from the buildings from Sarissa-Precision so I'm not in a hurry to move forward but I probably start experimenting with one of the smaller buildings and see if Plan B will actually work.