Little Green House and Garage ~ Tuesday, March 05, 2013

The Laser-Art Drayton House, and GCLater 1-Car Garage are almost made to go together.

There are actually quite a few examples around Redwood City, including this place that I regularly pass on my way to the station.

Putting together my models, I made a few modifications. I dug around my scrapbox and found some old Period Miniatures castings, and decided to give the house a bigger living room window, and a fancier back door. I also backdated the garage door (the one in the kit looks like a roll-up kind) with a wooden "barn door" type one from Grandt Line.

I made another small change to the kit based on an observation that a review in RMC made about another Laser-Art kit: the glue on strips of plastic brick material that come with the kit, which you're supposed to attach to the base of the walls are fairly stick, and visibly stick out--but real foundations are typically set back (inwards) from the wood siding. So dug in my scrapbox again and found some really thin plastic brick sheet. It's still stuck on top of the wood siding, but it's so thin it's not noticeable.

The project is coming along pretty well.

It's painted with a combination of proper "hobby" paint and cheap "craft" paint. The basic green color is the latter ("Christmas green"). For any model (typically structures) that aren't supposed to be shiny, craft paint works well for basic wall colors (I usually apply a spray-can primer coat first, especially on wood models, to keep the water-based craft paint from warping the wood).

Now I just have to shingle the roof, add some details like stovepipes, add lighting, put the models on a base, add some landscaping to the that, and it'll be done. I don't think I'll go as far as a full interior but some curtains would be nice.