illinois Central Chicago District - Monee Rebuild

[postalkarl]

Hey Vince:

Looks like you are off to a good start. Will be following along.

Karl

[vinceg]

Prepping the windows now. The kit has a feature I've never seen before - a cutting template for the acetate that forms the window glazing:



Pretty convenient, considering they didn't have laser cutters back in the day.

More shortly

[postalkarl]

Hey Vince:

I've never seen that before either. Good idea though.

Karl

[vinceg]

After poring over the instructions and blueprints for a while, I think I got an idea of which walls could be braced without interference. Fortunately, it looks like I can brace the major walls without a problem. That's good, especially because the windows on these walls do not have wood on all sides. That's even more susceptible to warping issues. I remember that when I built Bandit's Roost I had a small section of wall with a door in it that was notched in this way. When I hit it with the alcohol wash, it warped in weird ways, making the door opening an interesting curved shape. Could have just been unique grain for that particular part, but it was a pain to rewash and bend back into square.

Here's an example of a couple of walls I braced:



Typical bracing pattern. Some walls have vertical braces even with the edge of the wall. The ones to which they abut have vertical braces that allow for their mates' brace. Covering the window openings is not a problem. The castings do not protrude deeper than the thickness of the wall.

There's a space on one of the long sides (see wall D1 in the photo) because when assembled, there will be a floor that fits in here. This is way bigger than it needs to be.

For areas where the bracing does not go all the way to the edge, like D1 mentioned above or the left and right ends of the wall on the bottom, I stained both sides in those unbraced areas to reduce the stress on the wood caused by applying fluid to one side only.

More shortly.

[vinceg]

Here's the other side of the walls with their stain. I used Hunterline Driftwood:



I tried an experiment on the big wall on the bottom. Using my X-Acto knife with an #11 blade, I cut in some wood joints and then used a T-pin to put in some nail holes. The detail is very fine - I think it looks good here but, at this point, I was not sure whether it would still be visible after I painted the walls (spoiler alert - nope). That long wall is the back wall and will be very close to the backdrop. So, I'm not worried about the inconsistency I introduced. The truth is that I started scribing this in early on and then just forgot to finish the job after bracing the walls. I didn't notice that I had done that until after the stain was applied to highlight the relief.

More shortly

[vinceg]

Here are most of the windows and walls after finishing prepping.



For the walls, I applied Ivory acrylic paint using a sort of "heavy dry brushing" technique. I wanted the building to look weathered but not too dilapidated as I would expect an active commuter station to be in somewhat decent shape. After brushing on the paint, I went back with a light inkahol wash to dim it down a little bit.

The windows were primed with rattle can Khaki (color doesn't matter much as I painted completely over the primer) and then painted with Roof Brown. After that, I dry brushed on some highlights with Barn Wood acrylic paint. Finally, glazing applied to the back with Canopy Glue.

More shortly.

[vinceg]

For window shades, I decided to paint them on as I have been doing lately. In past kits, I just did this freehand and it worked out OK. For some reason, this time I had the bright idea of using painter's tape to get a nice, crisp, straight line. Here's the result:



Looks bad. Lots of irregular crags along the line. Perhaps I didn't pretty the tape down hard enough. I was a little afraid to do that as the acetate isn't that stiff and pressing hard would put stress on my glue joints. So, after a little futile corrective work using the back of an X-Acto knife, I finally came to my senses and repainted over them doing it freehand. I definitely overthought this one.

BTW, the shades are painted in acrylic Khaki. Here's the result (alone with the bay wall that I didn't show before):

Also BTW, if you're wondering about the horizontal line below the bay window in the bay wall, that is because that wall is made from two pieces of wood. That seam will later be covered with a 1x6 trim pice.



More shortly.

[vinceg]

Here are the finished walls:



If you look closely, you can barely see a little of the nail and board detail I put into the three-window wall. It's in the wide spot between windows two and three. I suppose it's there albeit super subtle. I think for this to work better I would do the detailing after paint but before the final light inkahol wash. I thought about doing it now but that would mean I would darken the walls another shade which I think I don't want to do. I'll just keep this in mind for next time.

In this pic you can also see a few pieces that I didn't think I could safely brace without creating build problems. Examples include the off-color wainscoting piece and the wall piece right above it. You can also see a little warping there. (I weighted them down during the Driftwood wash -- which worked -- but I could not use weights on them down after painting or the paint would stick). I'm sure I can straighten them out during assembly.

More shortly.

[vinceg]

I mentioned early on that this kit provides precut parts for all the strip wood. Here's an example - the door frame for the freight door on the first floor:



I would have thought this would be really convenient. And, in a way, it is. The parts are cut very accurately. It would seem to save a lot of work. What I found is reality is that I have zillions of these little pieces and I end up having to do a lot of measuring...not just for lengths but also for dimensional wood. For example, in the picture the stoop is 1/8" sq (easy), the vertical members are 4x6s and the top piece is a 6x8. There are quite a few pieces like this. Some 1", some 29/32", etc. I think I just prefer to cut my own pieces with my own measurements or over a template.

Interestingly, those other pieces you see (wainscoting and the piece above it) have to be chopped up by hand. Definitely feels like I'm starting to get a desire to try some scratch building. (just as soon as I build my three million kits...)

More shortly.

[vinceg]

Here's the door frame assembled:



And here's an "exploded view" of the front wall, minus the bay.



I'll need to fuss with this a while to make sure all of these pieces fit together to be the right width to match the brick foundation and the three second-story walls already assembled (you can see a small corner of that in the upper left.

I'll need to be away from this for a little while. Back as soon as I can.

[vinceg]

OK, back from our vacation and back in business. Here is the first floor front wall with the pieces all assembled:



It is always interesting to me how I don't "see" any of the imperfections until I take a close-up picture and post it here. I am noticing all of the little frayed wood pieces on the bottom of the wainscoting. I'll need to clean that up.

One thing you do notice is that the top piece (cream colored) is a bit longer than the wainscoting on the bottom. The top piece was cut to size according to the instructions as was the bottom. The strips of siding for both pieces were the same to begin with. But, there is extra wood for the top because of that double window in the middle. In any event, I had a choice - cut the top a little shorter to match the bottom or add a piece of strip wood to the bottom to make it match the top. Comparing this piece to the brick foundation I opted for the later as it appeared that matched both it and the width of the second story better. In later pictures, you will see that I added a piece of 4x4 strip wood to fill the gap.

The coarse interface between the top and bottom siding will be covered with a piece of trim.

More shortly.

[vinceg]

Here is a picture of the back and side wall assembly sitting on top of the back and side walls of the foundation. I am building this fairly differently from the way the instructions indicate. The manual asks you to glue down the second floor before doing anything else. I was concerned about doing that because the walls from the second floor fit over and around that floor. Because I wasn't sure how well things would fit (in part because of my potential for not following the instructions correctly), I am not yet doing that. In this pic, the second floor is not yet glued to the foundation:



Here is an example of my concern for getting things to fit. This is a picture of the second floor sitting inside the assembly with the three second-floor walls shown above:



You can see that I also used the Hunterline Driftwood stain on this (on both sides to reduce warping, then sitting under weights overnight). Before staining, this floor fit perfectly inside the wall assembly. Here you can see that the floor seems to have expanded by about two rows of flooring. I even measured it by hand after staining and, sure enough, it was bigger than it was beforehand. Not a problem here as I just cut off two boards. But, this did lead me to the approach of committing things to the build as late as possible so that I can react to issues.

More shortly.

[vinceg]

I also decided to build both stories of the front wall rather than one floor at a time. First, I wanted good alignment on the left and right for the corner moulding, and second I just wanted to be able to do a bit more test fitting before committing things that would be difficult to change. Here is a pic of the front wall without the bay window and finish moulding:



More shortly.

[vinceg]

Here's a look at the back of the front wall. Most of the bracing here is not specified in the instructions; rather, I used some of my 1/8" stock to stiffen things up. All of the bracing that is specified uses much smaller pieces of wood. Inadequate, in my opinion.



More shortly.

[vinceg]

Here is most of the bay window subassembly. Just missing the trim at this point. Seems like such a simple little piece but this was actually 18 pieces of wood that BIS provided (not including the trim to be added) plus my own additional bracing (and window castings).



More shortly.