Associated Grocers: Part 1

 I am kitbashing a background building to provide several sure spots for switching on the Ingleton shelf. I placed the walls of the partially completed structure in place for this in-process shot of the Associated Grocers warehouse. 

I started with parts from Walthers Cornerstone kit 933-3760 and taking measurements of the space between the back rail and the backdrop. The kit comes with two long walls with multiple loading doors. I chose the one with four garage type doors. I experimented with several other bits of walls from the kit to come up with my final combination. Truth be told, I asked my wife to choose the option she liked best. I cut several wall sections to fit with a razor saw and tried my hand at welding them together with Plastruct Plastic Weld solvent cement with support strips behind the joint. To get to what I hope to be the correct height of the doors I added a strip of .080 X .080 styrene along the bottom due to not using the Walthers base. While fairly satisfied with the results, the right angle corners are not perfect. I plan to order some City Classics corner braces before tackling my next plastic kitbash. 

Here, the walls are completed and washed with isopropyl alcohol. The doors and windows were trimmed from the sprues, edges sanded, and washed down with alcohol before I mounted them to a paint stick with painters tape. As I don't have my paint booth set up yet, I took them out to the garage to spray with rattle can primers. I used Rust-Oleum 2X Ultra Cover Primer in "Medium Grey" for the walls and loading dock roof components and 2X Camouflage "Deep  Forest Green" for the doors and windows. 

After the primer dried overnight, I went ahead and masked the areas of the walls that were concrete. I watched several Jason Jensen videos before tackling this project, with one called Working with Plastic Brick suggesting sponge painting the brick with three or four colors. I ended up just using three of the four colors shown in the photo: Dark Chocolate, Honey Brown, and Red Barn. Following his suggestion I used a sponge, rotating it so no pattern would show up and just allowing the colors to mix on the sponge. After the craft paints dried, I applied a wash of Vallejo Model Wash "Grey" over the entire wall.

After the wash and brick colors had thoroughly dried, I removed the masking tape and proceeded to try to paint the concrete foundation, window sills, and the roof trim seen to the left in the photo with just the primer applied. With this step, I made a mistake, but managed to push ahead and rectify it. Along with several kinds of solvent cement, I had ordered concrete colored model paint from Yankee Dabbler. I ordered True Color 801 flat brushable acrylic paint. It is an acrylic paint, but a solvent based acrylic paint. "Thins with acetone," I said to myself, "that's weird." But of course, I went ahead and started brushing it on. Well, big mistake! While the concrete sills worked okay with just one brushstroke, the foundation and roof trim that needed several brushstrokes soon turned into a mess. The acetone based solvent was so "hot" that it rewet the primer and it all started to turn into a sticky mess. After letting it dry, I repainted the foundation with a warm grey color that I made by mixing several craft paints. After that dried I brushed on a thin application of Vallejo Dark Grey Model Wash over the foundation.  

The next steps will be scratch-building a wooden loading dock, attaching the roofs, and installing the doors and window. 

Learning Points:

• I should order some City Classics corner braces or try another approach to corner bracing and gluing.

• I should also thoroughly investigate new products or at least try them out on scrap material before using them.