Building a Western Town: The Livery Stable

 It's always a good thing when a project is finished. 

That moment of satisfaction when you can say, "Whew! That's it with this baby!"

For so many of us miniatures folks, we get immersed in dozens of "ongoing projects", that are always "halfway complete but never finished. For me it's a lot of scenery and buildings, and this year I decided to actually do something about it.

I started my Western Town back in 2017, IIRC, and yet even before then (around 2012 I think), I decided to modify/convert, essentially re-work an ERTL building to see how it came out.

The ERTL "Farm Country/Cowtown" buildings are literally made for 28mm Western Gaming. Made of Soft Plastic, they have to be thoroughly cleaned, cleaned again, and then primed to be able to hold the paint.  They are available on Ebay and Etsy.  You can use them the way they are but they are literally crying out for modification. 

In this case, I decided to make a livery stable.

And I decided to honor a friend.

My friend and "brother from another mother", Dan Merchant died of complications from COVID Pneumonia on Dec. 23rd 2021. It broke my heart knowing that I will never actually see him on this plane of existence and around our gaming table. So I decided to honor him by making him "The proprietor" of the Livery Stable.

Pics are as follows: (Click on pic for bigger pics)....

(This is what it looks like right out of the ERTL box)...

(After a very thorough cleaning, the hard plastic parts were primed with flat black. I used Krylon as Walmart had a sale!)

Then it was time to add the wood.

The wooden planks are from a box of 5000 wooden coffee stir sticks that I was able to get from Starbucks. I thanked them by getting a Vanilla Bean and a slice of Chocolate Mousse cake with sprinkles on top!

I used E6000 to glue each strip down. There was some measuring and some angle cutting involved, so patience is a virtue. The E6000 works great in these projects, and my ruler and Dremel kept me working properly.

(The back end with all the wood on. Diligent readers will notice that the wood is not "perfect or flush". Remember, this is a worn barn/livery stable. It wasn't built to be "absolutely perfect".)

I did the front the same way...

(Checking out to see how the front looks. So far so good...)

Next up was a test fitting of the entire thing...

(And the test fitting seems to be good...)

So I went ahead and continued, and finally finished it up.

Next up was painting.

I used the standard Apple Barrel and Folk Art craft paints. Base color was Burnt Umber, with wash and drybrush of Burnt Sienna and Cinnamon, and a very light drybrush of white for weathering.

Signage was added and his name was placed onto it.

(Sign and name for him...along with a US Cavalry recruiting poster...)

Additional signage and weathering was added, and all was finally completed and I was pleased at how it looked.

Now my best friend will always be on the table when we do Western games.