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Finally made some significant headway in this installment. I only have one picture for you today, but I’ll try to tackle everything that has been done since the last entry.
First, let’s get to the picture:
Sam’s Roadhouse @ 75%
The most prominent change you’ll notice from the last entry is that both the left and right roof panels have been added along with the simulated adhesive rusted metal shingles (i.e. “stickers”).
The wood roof panels are marked both left and right and are fitted in place via tab and slot means along with white glue. I then bound the structure with rubber bands to hold the roof panels down until the glue dried.
Next were the 5 individual corrugated rusted roof stickers. There are 2 for each side, plus a single ‘cap’ sticker that bridges the gap at the roof apex. I added the bottom roof sticker on first so that there was a very slight overhang off the wooden panel edge as the sticker edge itself is not perfectly straight, but random which suggests they are made up of individual metal panels. Then the second “stickers” were attached slightly overlapping the top edge of the first ones. Finally the roof cap was applied. However, I found the sticker supplied by BlairLine to be almost too narrow and would pop up on one side consistently because there’s not enough surface area to adhesive ratio to keep it bound down. In order to fix this, I used a super adhesive glue and applied with a mirco brush about an inch at a time, then held it in place with my fingers until it welded to the other stickers. If BlairLine would have made this cap a little wider, this wouldn’t have been a problem. Just be careful here so that you don’t bond your finger to the roof and potentially damage or tear the paper roofing material.
Once I felt the roof adhesives had cured, I used my X-Acto blade (or razor would work as well) to trim off both the front and rear sticker overhangs so that they were flush with the wooden roof panels. If you didn’t do this, it could interfere with the placement and mounting of the angled roof trim.
Speaking of trim, all the building trim was first painted with acrylic Stonehedge green on their wooden sprues then had a 5% AI wash applied to them before being individually removed. Using an emery board, I lightly sanded the edges to remove any wooden burrs left over from the laser cut sprues. The trim was applied using tweezers and white glue. The angled roof pieces both mounted and married nicely, as well as the bottom edge trim. However, in my opinion, the corner trim leaves a larger gap than I would have liked to have seen.
Moving onto the porch, you can see I have mounted the first piece of hand railing to the left using white glue, but before I did this, I added a small paper sign between the door and left window as it would be easier to add this now than it would be later.
The last piece of detail added in this picture is the staircase to the right of the porch deck. Even with the supplied jig, this was still tricky to assemble using beads of white glue on an end of a toothpick, then mounting the completed staircase to the porch using yellow carpenters glue. I’m going to go back eventually and figure out some sort of bracing to strengthen this underneath as it is very delicate. I’ll talk about the stairs in more detail next time.
So what’s up next? Well, front railing, signage, weathering, and additional detailing.
