Building a Building (2nd Part)

To finish the assembly, you must hide all the cardboard on the corners of the walls. To accomplish this step all you have to do is add a small piece of wood on the exposed side and sand it so that it blends in with the rest of the wood.

Once you have finished assembling the major portions of the walls, I built a small stairway that gives access to the office on the second floor. I had in my bag of tricks a small plastic stairway that I had salvaged from another kit. The only thing I had to do was build the structure to support it. Just like the walls I started with a cardboard base, next I covered it with wood. The work was going along to well, I had forgotten to take pictures of this step. As you can see in a photo that I did take I extended the wood to form the railing, and as a finishing with the help of a Xacto knife I cut some wood pieces 1x3 in HO scale that were glued on to make the handrail.


There are two large sliding doors from were we get a look inside. It is obvious that if we do not treat this portion of the floor we will see only cardboard. It is not necessary to cover the whole inside, only cover the portion that we can see. To achieve this look I covered the floor with wood only on the portion visible from the doors. I then stained the floors with a mixture of India ink and alcohol, to give them a greyish tint simulating more or less being exposed to the elements.

Even if I did not intend to do the interior, I still would have put floors on the second level if for no other reason but to add strength to the structure, this also has the added feature for anybody looking through the windows, as if the building has two floors.

Before going any further, I had to do some painting. The windows also came from my bag of tricks; they were painted by airbrush with Tamya paint. The walls for there part, were put through an aging process to give them that aged look. For most projects of this type, I use inexpensive acrylic paint that you find in most hobby stores. In this case, I used Delta Creamcoat that I bought at Omer Deserres. The first coat must be grey and put on in a haphazard way. The more brush strokes you see the better the aging at the end will look. I look for ways to get irregular shapes. To really be successful at this step do not dilute your paint.

Once this coat is dry, you then apply your desired color. I used white; this coat must put on with more care, and always have the brush strokes follow the length of the wood strips. Please make sure that the paint is completely dry, before moving to the next step.
We have now arrived at the magical step. With the help of a piece of 220grit sandpaper not any rougher, you must always sand the wood along the length to reveal the grey beneath the white finish, and where ever you put the grey on extra thick that is what will show first. The windows were put on with cyanoacrylate glue (Super), I then added the

Les fenêtres ont été collées avec de la colle cyanoacrylate. J’ai ensuite ajouté les vitres que j’ai découpées dans une feuille de styrène transparent. Pour donner plus de vie au bâtiment, j’ai simulé un carreau brisé avec la pointe d’un X-acto. Dans le bureau au deuxième étage, j’ai créé des stores avec une pièce de ruban cache (Masking Tape)