STEP 3: Painting Windows & Doors
Paint the window and door castings just like
the siding was painted in the last step: a coat of Armor Sand, some
rubber cement if you want peeling paint, and a coat of your finish
color. After removing the rubber cement, an application or two of
alcohol stain should be added to collect in the graining that you've
added. (You did add some grain strokes with your razor or Xacto blade,
right? No skimping here, it takes time to do the razor blade grain, but
it's the small details that count! <g>)
Due to my choice of
finish color, the peeling paint effect
is fairly subtle on these castings, but it's there. One note: since
posting the last step, I've been using Magic Masker instead of rubber
cement.
The biggest
reason is that until it dries, it maintains some color, so you can
actually see where you are applying it, unlike the rubber cement which
is always clear.Magic Masker is a latex product, so you remove it just
like
you remove rubber cement, with a rubber cement eraser.
Assemble the Wall
Sub-Assemblies
Glue the Window and door castings in place. You can use anything that
will bond styrene to wood, but I usually use my standard wood glue,
yellow carpenter's glue. As long as you aren't putting stress on the
joints, it works very well, and allows you to pop the windows out at a
later time if you need to.
Next, glue the vertical siding to the base of the clapboard walls.
Make sure the ends of the clapboard walls line
up well with the ends of the vertical siding. In the photograph above,
there is poor alignment on the right side. Use the emory board to even
up any mis-matched edges like this example. Be careful to keep the
edges as straight and square as possible, as the edges of the main
structure walls will be very important in assembly and finished
appearance.
Lastly build up the freight door opening. Use some 2x6 or 3x6 and line
the inside vertical edges of the door opening, then add 1x6 fascia trim
to the top and sides of the door.
Finishing the 1x10 Siding
Secure some masking tape sticky-side up to a
piece of cardboard,
and line up some 1x10s as a preparation to airbrushing your finish
color onto the siding. Add some rubber cement or Magic Masker to
perhaps 1/3rd of these if you want to model some peeling paint. Below
is a shot of some 1x10s after they've been airbrushed with white,
the
masking material removed, and the boards lightly scraped with the edge
of a razor blade. They have also been very lightly sanded with a piece
of steel wool (just one or two light strokes per piece).
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Close up of
some installed siding.
This is a good time to decide just to what degree you want to model
worn siding. Below is a heavily worn prototype building, and below
that, an overview of the finished clapboard on the rear wall of the
model. While the prototype building isn't clapboard, the wear is
similar, the the structure size is very close to the structure we're
building.
Click image for a
larger view.
Notice that on both the prototype and the model wall, the heaviest loss
of paint is toward the bottom of the clapboard section. This is because
on a small building especially, the roof overhang will help protect the
paint higher up on the wall from sun, rain and wind, both on the side
and end walls. An exception would be that as the end wall gets
wider, the roof overhang on the end offers less protection toward the
middle of the upper parts of the wall, and obvious wear would be more
likely. But on this structure, most of the wall areas higher than 8' or
so will have less exposure to the elements than areas below 8'.
Let's Add Some
Clapboard
We'll only add clapboards to the front and
rear walls in this step. The corner fascia will be added to the end
walls
before adding the clapboards, so we'll save that for the next step.
Starting from
the bottom of each wall, begin gluing clapboards into the milled areas
of the siding. You can allow the ends to extend off the siding, as they
can be trimmed by running a sharp razor blade down the rear of the
siding.
When you get to the top of a window, cut a thin piece to fit the gap,
as in the above two photographs.
When you get to the top of a wall, add the top piece of clapboard so
the spacing between boards is the same as the lower boards, then flip
the wall over and trim off the top overhang.
On the front wall, you'll have to carefully cut boards to fit between
the window trim and door trim. Do this precisely so you have an exact
fit. I usually lay a long piece against the door trim, and where the
board passes over the window trim, I make an impression with the razor
blade, so the resulting piece will be only about 1" scale too long for
the correct fit. I'll do the actual cutting to length off the model,
then test fit the piece again, making note of how much more needs to be
cut for an exact fit. When working with such a small amount of excess
to be trimmed, you'll be surprised at how easy it is to once again move
the piece off the model, and place the razor blade in just the right
place for the final trim.
A note about nail holes: You can determine where studs would be, and
run a series of nail holes down the wall in these locations, but
really--how many nail holes have you seen in worn structure walls in
real life unless you're just a couple feet away? I'm of the opinion
that in most instances, nail holes fall into the category of
"characterization" rather than reality.
Next, we'll work on the end walls and the walls for the small addition.
Step
4 should be posted around the last week of October (give or take!).
Ron Hildebrand
September 2004
Photographs made with Nikon D1x and Micro-Nikkor 60mm f2.8
Copyright 2004, Ron Hildebrand
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