Building Calamity 25 - The "Hardware" Store - Wallpaper on the First Floor

I did a little more experimenting with the ink washes and then went back and looked at my original posts about weathering buildings for Calamity and I basically reinvented the wheel. So the post using the Vallejo Washes its very similar to what I was doing a couple of years ago which I can attribute my basic technique to a model railroad site. The real key to making it work is that you need to prime in white so the black ink goes gray as you spread it with the brush. The splattering of the ink on to the surface is what makes it different from my original weathering style and really gives it that nice random weathered look. I think this will be my go to technique for the initial weathered wood layer. Its relatively fast so once you get going it doesn't take long to finish it. It is messy though so be prepared! I use two brushes for the technique now, the first one I load up with ink and use that as my splatter brush, then a I take another brush to create the streaks. Get out your terrain brushes for this technique.

I went in and finished the small add on shack at the back. I still need to assemble it but it wasn't getting "paint" so I could apply washes on both sides. You can really make a difference in the color of the wood on the ink colors you choose. I really like the oxide yellow for a real soft new wood look. It has a very "piney" feel to it.

This is the interior side of the add on.

This is the exterior side of the add on. I did go back in and apply some more weathering to the window frame. The window frame will get my chipped paint technique.

After doing a that bit of weathering I went back and added the wallpaper to the interior walls of the first floor. The only piece that I have left to finish is the front wall which is rather complicated with the doors and windows. Its going to take a bit of cutting and fitting to finish that piece off. After that I'm considering the interior to be finished and I think I can start assembly the building. I want to do that before painting since I need to add some trim pieces to the corners after its all glued together.

Each wall with a door takes three pieces. I don't worry about seams showing as that would be pretty normal.

Three walls at once. I love my steel weights!

This one is almost done, the last two pieces are being glued into place.

The wall with no windows, this one was easy!

Checking out how things look.

A view that we won't see again once the building is glue together. Although this does remind me that I still need to make some doors!

A bit of an overhead look. This will be the most common view, I think its looking pretty good!

Building Calamity 23 - The "Hardware" Store - Wallpaper

Yet another grand experiment for the Calamity buildings is the addition of wallpaper, specifically patterned wallpaper. I found a couple of dollhouse sites that had free wallpaper downloads and acquired a number of interesting patterns. The most common dollhouse scale is 1/12 which makes the patterns way to large to be of use so I shrunk them down to something that looked more appropriate for the citizens of Calamity. I think the pattern I used for the upstairs of the hardware store may still be to large but I think it gets the job done.

I decided to start with the top floor and, of course, in my eagerness to get to get to it I forgot that I should have painted all of the interior trim FIRST before adding the wallpaper. Oh well, there is still the first floor to apply that lesson to. Wallpaper is very common in the old west, because it was cheap, relatively easy to apply and it provided some insulation in the form of sealing up those gaps between the planks used for the walls. 

I'm happy to report that the glue I used works much better on the PVC after it has been primed. It didn't work as nicely on my roofs as I applied the glue on the first row house on the bare PVC and it peeled up on me in several places. Piecing the wallpaper together on the walls was a bit of challenge and a little time consuming. I'm thinking that maybe it would be better to apply the wallpaper first before I even cut stuff out. I'll have to think about that one a bit.

So on to the pictures!

Primed white with Badger Stynylrez primer

This is an easy piece. glue the whole thing on without cutting.

Trim it up and its ready for...oops I really should have painted that trim first.

The side with two windows was a real bear to do. In fact I left the small strip of space at the bottom of the windows bare. It just wasn't worth the effort.

The interior wall

Everything in place and held together with my favorite metal blocks. A little paint work on the inside and I can assemble the top floor.

Calamity - Newspaper Office - Interior work

A bit more progress on Calamity's next building. I made a run to one of the craft stores and picked out some paper from the scrapbooking section that had some texture on it. The texture is probably a bit out of scale but its useful for this. I'm using this for wallpaper. I went to work and painted the wood first, which allowed me to be a little messy and then applied the wallpaper in strips. Now a real wall hanger wouldn't leave the seams that I did, that was deliberate on my part. I wanted more texture to draw the eye into the building. At this point I'm about ready to assemble the whole thing but that will have to wait till I can get back to my regular workbench and my clamps. There are still exterior details to finish off, like the top front and the backside of the false front plus I haven't cut out the roof pieces yet either. They shouldn't require much work since I'm just going to apply shingles directly to the plastic. I might add another interior wall to this one, I haven't quite decided yet. I need to decide before I assemble the building as I'll  have to make some adjustments on the interior side of the long walls. We will see. I have also toyed with lighting the interior, but I haven't found anything that I can really make into a light easily, plus I would have to figure out how to wire it. I can save that for another day.

Here are a few pictures of the progress so far:

Some dark wood color applied to anything that resembles wood on the inside. Since the top will be covered with wallpaper I can be messy here,

I decided to start applying the wallpaper to the walls of the addition first. Here is the first strip glued in place, I used Scotch Quick-Dry Adhesive for this.

Three strips applied and trimmed up.

Finished with the wallpaper in the addition

Finished with the wallpaper in the main room

The other side of the rear wall finished up.

Dry fitting the parts together to see how they look. Pretty pleased at this point. Didn't have any painted citizens with so this one had to do.