Happy Monday! Got the front doors built and installed today and did the Top Knot finishing.
As you'll see on the finished picture. The apartment door is much, much narrower than the main gallery door. I still don't know why I reduced the width of the building when I reduced the height and length… maybe I was trying to keep the proportions, but the result was both doors were smaller than my laser cut pieces and the left-hand door was very much narrower. As I said before, I could have removed stock from the brick wall next to the door, but this gets some more detailing which I didn't was to short change.
I installed both doors attached to the first floor plate. Both needed packing to fill the gaps between the front window assembly and provide a secure mounting surface. I used solvent cement to glue the styrene parts together and medium CA to glue the styrene to non-styrene parts. I have to be especially careful when assembling the base to the building, but everything does nestle in nicely.
I built the transom and door as separate pieces for the main door and this led to some minor alignment problems. For the apartment door, I simply built it as one piece and cut a line to simulate the door separation from the transom. For the door handle I bent some 1/32" solid aluminum rod which negated the need to paint it some metallic color. Nothing simulates metal better than metal.
Here're the two doors permanently installed. Circumferencely challenged individuals might have trouble with that left door's width. The front assemblies were a lot of work and fiddling.
I air-brushed white on all the top knot exposed surfaces, so it was time to finish this detail. The sides of the top knot get fish scale shingles which I did today. I then used my left over, self-adhesive, sheet roofing (Bar Mills) and a scale 4' wide. I put the roofing on and went back and CA'd any areas that weren't sealing properly.
I then masked the white edges and brush-painted two coats of Tamiya Nato Black (very dark gray). The second coat I brushed in the direction that water would flow. All of the edges and corners get additional fancy molding. It's going to look much more refined by the end of this week. The junction between the Mansard and the top knot also gets some of that 1/2 round trim once it's all glued together, which it isn't yet.
Trim work will start tomorrow.
