Brick Freight House - Starting the Build

The Brick Freight house is the first kit offering from Monster Model & Laserworks. I did a quick rundown through the components and quality last week and mentioned a few minor annoyances with the instructions. You can find that original post here: Test Fit

This weekend I decided to take a break from painting and gaming and get started on this kit. I grabbed my clamps and glue and took it north with me to start the fun.

As anticipated from the dry fit, the kit almost fell together. Well, maybe not fell together, the tabs and slots are pretty tight fits over all. As you will be able to tell from the photos you really can't have to many clamps and I made use of just about everything I had. At this stage the most difficult assembly turned out to be the roof. Since it has a border all the way around the edge this had to be lined up and clamped down with nothing to really line things up against. Then you have to very carefully separate the drainage grates from their sprue. That turned out to be the hardest part of the kit so far. You need 11 of these grates and there are 12 on the sprue. I only managed mangled one of them and that was when I was trying to pick it up to glue it onto the roof.

Some initial paint work was done at this stage as well. I followed the kit instructions for this and grabbed some of my MIG powders and 99% Isopropyl alcohol and went to work. Essentially you are mixing up your own paint and you need to lay it on thick enough to hide the grain of the wood. I think I managed that part pretty well. The next step is to apply a thick layer of dullcote and this is actually going to "frost" the brickwork to create the mortar lines. If the "frosted" effect is to much then you can dab the alcohol back on the surface to restore the color. I only managed to pull off the effect on a about a 1/3 of the model. I haven't gone back with pure alcohol yet to reduce the areas that are to frosted. I'm a bit undecided on how I will proceed with the painting at this point. I didn't have any black paint so the roof remained unpainted at this point. I need to build the optional clerestory for the roof before I go much farther with that anyway.

Over all I made good progress, moving at a moderate pace to make sure everything dried properly before moving on to the next. Fortunately, I live in a dry, high altitude climate and things tend to dry pretty quickly.
Now on to the pictures.

Not in any particular order but these pictures show the bracing being clamped into place.

 

Here the structure is being clamped together.

 Here's a quick test; dry fitting the roof to make sure everything is still square. It is!

And the roof clamped up

 My assortment of clamps. I used them all!

 Lunch time!

And then a couple of hours for everything to set and the brushes come out.
Mmm, this seems to be working.

And the next day after I have applied the dullcote. You can see the deliberate "frosting" effect. I wonder if this is a reaction between the alcohol and the lacquer based dullcote, but then why didn't it work over the entire building?