My project over the last couple of days has been to prepare the brick paper.  The first step was to paint each sheet of the brick paper with Floquil Oxide Red.  I used a fairly wide brush, but in the future I think I will use an airbrush as I finally bought an air-compressor.  An airbrush would have made the painting go much quicker and would have given better control over the thickness and coverage of the sheet.

Once this had dried (I waited until the next day, but you could probably do it in a couple of hours) I used a wash of Cermicote off white.  I thinned it with about 3 droppers of water mixed in.  I started by using the wash on only a quarter of the sheet at a time, but by the time I got to the last sheet I would do it in much larger sections without any problems.  Letting the wash dry for only a couple min I used a rag (I used an old t-shirt) and wiped most of it off of the paper.  I varied the directions in which I wiped it so that the wall would develop different patterns to the color of the brick.

After allowing the wash to dry for a couple of hours I sealed it with a quick coat of Testor’s Dullcote.

I continued the construction of Dorothy’s house, using the Micro-Mark magnetic gluing jig to hold the bottom of the walls while they were being glued.  At the top of the walls I used the the blue painter’s tape to hold the walls until the glue dried.  I found that using Elmer’s wood glue works very well on the cardstock walls, and that you usually only need to hold it into place for a couple of minutes.

After getting the walls glued to the top and bottom floors I waited for them to cure and then added the interior floors, making sure to line them up with the wallpaper on the inside.  I found that the magnets for the jig happened to be the correct height to hold the first floor at the correct level while it dried.  The floors are made by using the embossed sheet, which I glued to the cardstock using the 3M contact cement.  I then painted them using PolyScale roof brown, as I think it matched the color of that type of floor quite well.

After painting the area between the first floor and the sub floor a dark color I glued the remaining walls in place.  I did not glue the back wall on as I am considering putting an interior in this house.  Here is the picture of the building with all of the walls in place:

The next step will be to paint and install the brick paper.

As a Christmas present my wife gave a the Scale Structures Limited model, Dorothy’s House.  This is a cardstock and cast metal craftsman model of a brick house with all of the fancy “gingerbread” decorations.

Upon first opening the box it was slightly intimidating to see the sheer amount of parts, which were separated into different bags.

I read the instructions completely and then dove into the kit.  The first step was to indentify the walls and floors and cut them from the rest of the cardstock parts.  I then used 3M contact cement to glue the “wallpaper” onto the inside of the walls:

In the picture you can see the large amount of parts in their respective bags.  Also you can see how I turned the pieces right side up so that I could trim the wallpaper to fit the panels.

Once I had put the wallpaper on all of the walls I was able to start construction.  I used the the magnetic jig from Micro-Mark to assist in building the walls. By using waxpaper in the jig I was able to easily remove the model once the glue had dried.  Per the suggestions in the manual I did not glue the back wall (the large one) in place as I want to be able to remove it to add furniture and people at a later date.

For glueing the walls to the floor panels and each other I used Elmer’s Wood Glue.  The 3M blue painters tape was very helpful in holding the various wall panels together while drying.

In the next post I will show how I completed the remaining wall panels and installed the floors.

After installing the final section of the dock I cut out and assembled the railings on the cork board.  Once these had dried I glued them onto the edge of the dock using Elmer’s wood glue.  I then assembled the ramp leading down from the opening in the wall by using the provided scale lumber.

The next step was to fabricate the rest of the ice skid along the length of the dock.  Using more scale lumber I cut the pieces to length and glued directly on to the deck.  I created stops at either end using scrap pieces.  I set the blocks of “ice” on the skid to see how the final look will be.  If you look next to the opening in the wall under the cooling tower you will see where I added a ladder for roof access.

About the only thing left on this model is to glue the gravel on to the roof panels, and then weather the entire model, which I most likely won’t do until I place it on a layout or diorama.

After adding the long expanse of the ice dock on the Union Ice Company kit, I decided that I was going to extend the dock in a “T” shape to meet the building instead of just installing a ramp for the ice.  I used the template for the original ice dock to create the needed parts, though I ended up using slightly smaller material (what the hobby shop had available).

Here is a picture showing the end of the existing dock, which I added a Plastruct stairway and railings as the wood looked too “cluncky”.

I then assembled the filler piece for the dock on the cork board and inserted the completed piece into the gap, using a bottle of paint as a weight to assist in gluing the piece into place:

Here is the completed addition to the dock, waiting for the ice ramp and railings to be installed.  My logic behind making the change in the ice dock was to make it so that if a block was stuck, the workers would be able to walk over and fix the problem without needing a ladder.  Also I added a small ladder going up from that level to the shorter section of the roof, which I will show in a later post.