Thankful Thursday & Progress Report

For this week's "Thankful Thursday" I want to thank those who were able to share some kind words and stories about Dave Messer. I've written at length about how the folks you meet in this hobby are its biggest asset and how the friendships you develop through this shared passion are ones that last a lifetime. That's just the nature of this community. Unfortunately, when we lose one of our own, their passing leaves a large hole.

I'll admit that despite a recent "flow" on the layout, the motivational winds have diminished significantly over the past bunch of days. Fortunately, I did make some progress early last week . . .

The terraforming of the previous week being finished, it was time to give everything a base coat of dirt color.

The previous photo and this one show the state of things after all (well, hopefully all) of the base terrain was done - using a combination of cardboard strips, plaster gauze, foamcore board, cardboard, and drywall joint compound.

A base coat of "dirt color" (matched at Home Depot to a sample of actual dirt from my yard) immediately makes things look better.

For the most part, I didn't bother painting the road areas or where I needed to preserve structure footprint markings.

Moving my focus from the Wethersfield scene to Wethersfield structures, I sprayed the interior walls of the lumber co office black.

I also wanted to paint the foundations for the Ballantine's office. I hope to do a more detailed post on this structure soon, but for now I can say that it came from the rooftop of the Walthers Grocery Warehouse kit I used to model the main Ballantine's warehouse. Click here for that build. Having removed it from the roof, it needed a foundation & stairs, which I got from Walthers Modular parts. I just needed to paint it.

Here's a better view of the office(s). The Ballantine's office is actually a pretty cool structure once you add the foundation. I also sprayed the exterior walls of the lumber co office gray. I'll definitely need to weather those walls.

Finally, I continued my "starter craftsman kit" building by trying my hand at heavily weathered wood siding. These parts were sprayed a base of dark gray and then drybrushed with barn red. I think I need to add more red and then maybe "back it back" with weathering. The weathered white windows/doors/trim were done with drybrushed white over the same base gray. Experimentation continues. . .

That's where things were as of mid-week last week. There's been an ebb hobby-wise over the last week between the recent news and celebrating the Missus' 50th birthday (an admittedly much nicer reason to take a break from the layout). I also came down with a cold in there somewhere so have been using my early-morning hobby time to just sleep in a bit.

But I can see a wave on the horizon. . . after this "ebb", it looks like another "flow" may be coming. And in the spirit of "Messer Motivation" I want to catch that wave and ride it as long as possible - hopefully all the way to seeing the Wethersfield scene finally completed, and very soon.