change textures on static models

my group is making a environment game where player is able to build a town. we want to implement a texture change on the house(mainly so all house don't have same colors) by the player choices. I did a search on this, and all i could mainly find was player.setskinname or rebuild the engine, but i don't understand or couldn't get them to work as few were short in their info. Is there a easy step of doing this with out rebuilding engine?