The Real Estate Market Heats Up in Johnstown

 That title aught to get the search engines going! As mentioned in my last post, I managed to score a bunch of DPM buildings at fire sale prices at a train show.  I've already got the first two of them knocked out.

The first buidling (pictured above) was the "Roadkill Cafe" kit. I stayed pretty conservative with the color choices. I used Floquil "Boxcar Red" for the brickwork, "Roof Brown" for the cornice, windows and trim and "Grimy Black" for the roof.

Once the paint dried, I coated the walls with some Apple Barrel "Pewter Grey" craft paint (readily available at Wal Mart) and wiped most of it off with a paper towel. This nicely fill in the mortar lines between the bricks and really enhances the building's realism.

Once the craft paint dried, I hit the building with a coat of weather wash, followed up with Dulcote.  I skipped the chalks because I want the building to look like part of a vibrant downtown and not look rundown.

The last bit of business was the window inserts. Before installation, I sprayed them with Dulcote to fog them up, thus hiding the empty interior. I then installed the windows with the Dulcoted side in. This way you still have a glassy look on the outside. Lastly, I used some of the leftover styrene from the roof to fashion window shades for the top floor.

I started off the kit building with an easy one. From here on out, I decided to build the most difficult ones first. These DPM buildings are all basically four walls and roof and as such go together in about five minutes. The trade off is the windows, doors and trim aren't separate pieces, which makes painting them the time-consuming part.

The second kit I built was "Wilhelm's Mercantile." Rather than hand brush all those windows, I sprayed the two front walls (the one's facing the streets) Testor's "Flat Olive." I then carefully painted around each window with "Boxcar Red." This actually worked quite well as the colors go nicely together and the painting went a lot faster.

For the back walls, I used "Boxcar Red" on the brickwork again and "Roof Brown on the doors and windows. Once painted, it was lather, rinse repeat for the mortar lines, weathering and window inserts. All told, I think this building came out pretty nifty looking.

So that's two down, five more to go. This is what helps keep my enthusiasm for working on the layout strong. When you of doing one thing, you can do another. Tired of scenery? Build some buildings! Tired of building? Ballast some track!. I think what's stopped me in the past is having a big job that has to be done before any other work can proceed and not wanting to do said big job.