The Breen Building - Another Building Makeover on a Budget - Updated 2 Apr 16

Got a little bit more work done on this building.  I've been using a combination of goop (in most places) and yellow wood glue (for the wood-on-wood places) to reassemble and reinforce this structure.  I have the "overhang" area about done.  I was going to secure it to the main building permanently, but I actually think it would be best to keep it separable.  Here is my progress so far... clamps have been essential to this somewhat drawn out process:

A rail spur runs under this loading dock shown below.

Now that the reassembly and reinforcement is over, I can start doing some gapfilling, making the roof, adding the lighting, and refinishing the back of the building.

Yesterday and today we cut out the roof (using the old roof as a template), tested placement of the roof vents, placed some tape to keep the glue area of the vents clean, and painted the roof with "stone" spray paint:

Roof Panels Cut:

Vents Test Fit:

Roof Panels Painted:

...and I discover the spray paint will cause foam point to fully delaminate

...so, since I used up all the stone paint, I glued the painted layer onto the original pizza box roof.  I used small clamps for the smaller roof section:

...and for the larger roof section, I opted for my Huggies clamp:

-Dustin

Thinkin' outside the box? 

Absolutely love the roof vent idea! Thank you for posting that!

I have been saving the same tops myself!    I was going to use them as a factory load.

Looking good Frizzinbee!  Liked how you made those roof vents.  Neat idea.

I'm impressed. Excellent. 

Love the Bridge in the back ground. 

Good luck. John    

Thanks again for compliments!  I just kind of stumbled upon the squeeze juice caps (my kids are frequently sucking those things down), but I'm glad others can make use of the idea (or had already thought of it independently) as well!  The bridge in the background at the club was built by Matt, with everyday materials, and is one of my favorite features there.  The silver one you can see a portion of in my garage is a 48" truss bridge that I bought to add some gravitas to the hole layout.

Anywho, back to the Breen... I was able to successfully salvage the roof pieces, weather up the vents, and attach them to the roof. The white spots are where I has tape to ensure that he stone paint didn't cover the vent mounting points.  The uneven pattern on the roof is totally accidental (I ran out of stone paint) but I like the way it looks:

I'm a big fan of the acryl "rust" color, which I dry-brush on to simulate... well... rust: 

Here's the roof vents:

And here they are installed.  The smaller vent was original to this building, so I used it again:

-Dustin

Wow another great looking project. Have you ever thought about just going into building stuff for sale? With your skills you would make a killing. I love fallowing your post and projects.

I made some minor progress on the Breen Building over the last few days.  Here is the non-brick side of the building after the first coat of white paint:

...and here is the overhang section after I did some filling with lightweight spackle.  I plan to clean it up a little, and do some blending to make it all match up.

Here is the back (or is it the side?) of the building with a couple new advertisement posters in place.  I also plan to add 1-2 more (much) smaller ones, and may weather these up a bit.  A couple guys at the Club and I collaborated on the signs:

Here's the first sign:

...and the second:

...and here's a shot showing how the white side matches up with the rest of the building:

-Dustin

We made some more progress on the Breen Building.  Not a lot (again), but we're getting there bit by bit.  Progress should pick-up a little now that the Donut Shop is complete:

We added a few more ads to the building, including a plug for the new Donut Shop in town:

We also installed LED lighting (warm white this time, for an older building) under the loading dock and inside the loading dock itself:

Also glued the roof of the loading dock overhang in place, now that its lighting is installed:

Here we used small diameter wood dowels to make scale downspouts and glued those in place.  They break up the rear of the building really nicely and provide just enough detail to make it more believable.  We also gave the ads a light sanding to make them look less brand new.  The tape is, of course, temporary, while the glue dries:

-Dustin

You know Dustin, after watching all you do. It's going to make me break into some of my old models and see what I can do to make them more real and less toy looking. Granted the models come looking good, but nothing like you produce or upgrade! Love the work you do. Please keep it up for the rest of us to watch and learn.

I really dig your "repurposing" of stuff!! I feel pretty confident scratch building stuff, and your works provide additional inspiration. 

Keep up the good job!

Wow, Dustin. Great work! Love how the signs turned out.

Thanks again for all the compliments!  I made a little bit more progress over the last couple nights, and the building is coming together.  I expect that I'll have it done by this weekend:

First I was able to finish-up the internal wiring and install the second half of the roof.  The "overhang" portion will remain removable (at least until layout install), so it is connected to the main building via a quick-connect for electrical power.

Here's the quick-connect within the main building:

The roof had some unseemly gaps between it and the wall.  I attempted to "tar" the edges of the roof using some liquid electrical tape I had handy.  It worked, and looks good from a few feet away, but in retrospect a smaller brush would have been wise.

Here's the building earlier this evening after I had touched-up the gray "concrete" sections of the building.  Looks sharp, but needs weathering and blending:

Once the paint dried a little, I took 0000 steel wool to it to give it some weathering to better blend the new paintL

...and here's the current progress.  Next step is to continue touching up the details, blend (lightly) with some weathering chalks, add some plant growth back in, etc,

-Dustin

Looking good, Dustin. Looking really good.

I have that same metal bridge I painted mine and added 2 flashing red led's to the top peak.  your redo looks great. it's a neat building

Another great looking build! Make me wonder what your going to pull out of your hat of tricks next! I know whatever it is it's going to be GREAT!

Jhainer posted:

I have that same metal bridge I painted mine and added 2 flashing red led's to the top peak.  your redo looks great. it's a neat building

 

Looks nice!  I haven't worked up the courage to paint mine, but yours looks really good in black!  If I do paint my bridge, I'd go with either the black you used or an "industrial" green.  I'm very pleased with my truss bridge, and kind of surprised you don't see more of them around on layouts - they are certainly a good value!

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Thanks again for the compliments on the building, guys.  I can't take too much credit for this one as I'm just "re-building" it.

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I did do a little bit of work on the Breen Building tonight.  I took some weathering chalks and did some light weathering and blending to match the parts I repainted.   Not sure that it shows in the photos, but in person the coloring seems a little more cohesive.  Mostly I toned-down the white "mortar".  I also added a couple signs on the overhand supports:

Final step will be to add a little foliage and vine growth around the building.  I removed some of it to do the rehab, and I'd like to add back in the character it provided.

-Dustin

The Breen Building is now complete!  Plan is to bring it back to the club Saturday to re-install on the layout.  In the pics below, I have the "plant growth" added and have the LED lights wired-up to test:

I'll tack down this part of the roof that sticks up when the building is installed on the layout:

-Dustin

Very clever ideas! It turned out great. I'm off to hand out some apple sauce packets to my boys now so I can use the caps!!! . 

bigtruckpete posted:

Very clever ideas! It turned out great. I'm off to hand out some apple sauce packets to my boys now so I can use the caps!!! . 

Sounds like a good plan, lol!  We've been saving all our caps since we noticed how cool they look... I think I now have a lifetime supply

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The Breen Building was installed on the club layout today.  Here's a few pictures of it in place.  As I noted before, the blank area in front of it will be detailed out by another member, who is adding a junk yard.  This section of the layout is also somewhat  incomplete, and we're doing some rearranging of buildings as we go:

and now with the lights wired in too:

-Dustin