The fact is, young people are often more creative than us old guys. We need their insights. Look at the age of people in the control room of Space X, Elon Musk's space exploration company. Very young and very energetic.
Monday… happy Monday. As a retiree with a deal with my wife that I'll do no model building on the weekends, for the first time in my life I look forward to Mondays more than Saturdays.
I finished up all four cellar windows and put a mullion down the middle. Unfortunately, since they were all custom made to the size of the holes that I created, they vary in size a bit. In this picture, the larger one will be partly occluded by the outside stair (which is the second thing I did today). These will be painted and glazed off the model and then installed.
Since I drew the outside stair originally in SketchUp and then in CorelDraw, I was able to stick the drawing onto the Evergreen clapboard styrene and then cut out the main profile piece. For the rest of the parts that determined its width, I used the Tichy door molding to determine the width since my SketchUp drawing used a door from their 3D Warehouse and it wasn't sized the same. I gave an 1/8" clearance on each side of the frame and cut the piece out. The thin cross-section of the sides broke on one side so I glued it back with a backing piece to reinforce it. I roof is "corrugated metal" styrene left over from making the cooling tower in the refinery. The bottom piece is a chuck of novelty siding left over from making the Victorian Station. Gotta hold onto all those scraps.
I glued all the pieces up with the side pieces butting up against the profile piece. I used 1/8" square stock to reinforce the corners. I used angle blocks to set up the right angles. For the transition pieces for the roofing I used some thin styrene sheeting to wrap the angle and give it something to glue to. Notice I numbered all the pieces to keep it all straight.
The roof design gave me some pause. The slanted portions would drain straight down so the corrugations when linearly, but the flat pieces needed to be pitched outwards so the water just didn't sit there. So I made some tapered supports out of some strip stock and glued the roof pieces to these.
Here's the completed structure put next to the building as it will sit.
I used some small styrene angle for the corner trim and some 0.020" X 0.100" strip for the fascia boards. The window opening is sized for the large Grandt Window that I used on the first floor with the trim facing the outside as normal practice. I then started working on the angled framing that will support the upper landing. I'm using 0.040" X .188" which looks very much like a 2 X 12 structural member. The pieces on the wall are just being fitted. There will be angled members down to them and I'll probably put an NBW on them to make it look like something is actually holding them to the wall. Please note: This is not on the correct wall. The correct wall is the one around the corner on the right. I just stuck it there for the photo. The pic below is on the correct wall.
I'll finish all this up tomorrow and get ready to paint and weather all of it. To connect this assembly to the building I think I'm going to install a wood block between the upper slant roof and lower slant panel and hold it to the building with a screw from the inside. It will be a much cleaner installation and should be easy to do.The screw would be in an unseen area.
I removed the backdrop off the layout today since the photo session is complete. Then I took this picture showing what the water from the dishwasher leak did to my streets. I was a having a continuous problem with delimitation before, but the moisture made it worse. I have a major street repair project facing me. Since all the buildings are removable, (just unhook their electrical leads underneath) I'll probably remove them to give an open work surface. I'm thinking of stripping all the strathmore board off the green foam substrate and then adding something… what? Maybe Masonite. My curbs are too high anyway so a thicker road surface will be a benefit. I'm also thinking about styrene, but I worry about paint adhesion. I'd be trading a headache for an upset stomach… bulging to peeling. I've kept the XING stencils which is a good thing.
