Ok after doing this one for about 2 day (about 3 hours of actual modeling and texturing, the rest rendering)
I have come to the conclusion to approach scenes like these with modeling -> Lighting-> Materials -> Tweaking
cause I would have finished this a lot sooner had I done that. It probably would have looked slightly better but I got frustrated and did the best I could do without jumping out the window.
here it is, let me know what you think