New Structures: Rebuilding a used castle!

A few weeks ago I bought a used N scale castle from my local hobby shop.  I think it was part of a lot from an estate sale.   It was in pretty rough condition but I thought I might be able to rehabilitate it.

It was a Kibri kit, below is the manufacturers rendition:

And here's what I picked up for cheap:

You will have to click on the above to really see how ugly it is   The seams on the walls, the paint, the orange ground, the glossy roof...  It begs many questions.   Worst of all, whoever built this kit made no effort to produce something good.   The casting marks are all over the parts, the points of attachment to the sprunes have not been clipped nor sanded, parts were just glued together haphazardly.  Doors and windows were askew.  Worst of all, those walls!

I suppose I should have bene tipped off by the manufacturers photo- each wall segment joint is covered by some flocking material, so even in the best possible rendition this kit is a little rough.  Once I disassembled it and started sanding and fitting parts I found that even in the best case the results will be sub par, as the moulds this was cast from are clearly dated.   In fact, there's a copy write on a baseplate fr West Germany!  A modern kit this was not.

Anyhow, I tool it all apart, sanded the fitting edges, trimmed the injection marks, scrapped off the excessive old glue and then repainted it.  Once dry it came back together without too much fuss, but in retrospect I should have taken more photos of the before state, it would have made it easier.

Here's my end result:

   I chose to discard the extra base section it came with (seen in the top photo) because as my wife pointed out, it looked like it was perched atop a volcano!