Building Crabtree: 2 more buildings and "Just how big is this gonna get?"....

Greetings once again dear readers!

So with Little Wars cancelled, I will admit that some of the "energetic wind" has gone out of my sails, but I am slugging on!

Last weekend I took a bread and my wonderful wife (Gawd bless her!), and myself did some travelling and I ended up doing some photography of some small towns in Indiana, and (believe it or not), paint scheme ideas for some of my buildings.

This weekend the muse is slowly being supportive, and I was able to do the last two major buildings in step one of the "assembly line" process.

The first is The "General Store"...

The General Store has all sorts of dry good, household sundries and items that you would need living out on the frontier. From cans of beans and coffee, to fabric and even horehound candy and lemon drops, The General Store can get you what it is that you need....

Another side shot showing the weathering of the whitewashed building.

I am going with a simply "Black and white paint job" for this building. A lot of Amish building up in Berne, Indiana have this and it's a bit of an attention getter believe it or not.  As always there is still more work to be done.

Next up: THE BANK!!!

"The First Regional Bank" base coated a dark green, this one will be highlighted with a lighter green and a nice yellow trim that will make it stand out and very appealing to the eyes of customers wishing to deposit their money, and gunmen intent on making large withdrawals....

So the first step: "Assembly line" is done. All basic buildings have had their initial paint jobs and assembly line tests done.

Now to get an idea of just "how big" this is going to be",  here are some photos:

Nine of the Eleven currently planned buildings sitting in a row. The other two are O scale plastic style kit buildings. The building in the middle is a scratch-build....

 So then I decide to get some overall pics of them:

"Miss Melodies Ladies Emporium" graces the end. With all the support she gives me, it's only appropriate that she gets building #1 named in her honor...

Two more yet to be names shops.  I think one may be a small cafe style..."Widow Morley's Mockingbird Cafe"...

The Saloon, (Red) and The Undertaker (scratch-built with the white frontage)...Nice size windows for displaying of the latest customers....

A shot showing The Bank, The General Store, The Barber Shop, The Saloon, The Undertaker, and an unnamed shop.  Gonna have to start to some serious city planning if this keeps getting bigger...

A side by side comparison shot of The Bank and The General Store...

Men with guns...on the sideboard-walks of town...trouble is soon to follow....

Another shot of "The side-board-walks of town....trouble is a-brewing soon I think!!!

The "easy part" is now over with...

Now comes "the hard part".

This will include adding doors, windows, trim, wall-paper, decor, signage and final weathering....

Each one is going to take a while but it will get done.

That's it for now...more to come....

Building Crabtree: Barber Shop, Signs, and some backstory ramblings....

Well it's official that I will NOT be going to Little Wars this year....

I had to grit my teeth and send in my cancellation notice simply because of work.

But that is not stopping me from building my town, nosiree....

So I am continuing and am presenting the next building: "The Barber Shop".

This is yet another Knuckleduster building, and in doing this one I decided to go with a "blue color", to give some appeal and attraction.

Naturally the harsh climate of the Old West has weathered the blue paint, as well as the weathering and wear on the wooden walk-boards outside.

And while working with this building, I have decided to start previewing some of the signs and perhaps the back history (stories) of some of them.
My players know that one of my greatest joys is creating NPC's/Characters that are simply more than "walking bait" for murderhobos. Too often in games we see "Joe" walking along carrying a sack, and a full money purse displayed from his belt. The characters have no idea or concern over who he is, what he is doing, etc, and usually neither does the GM. They just need "a hook".
So I try to give some atmosphere (as well as possible future story-lines), in with my characters.

An example of this is for the Barber Sign below.
This sign will be on the previously displayed building.

But there is a history to the barber....aka "Barber Joe", (more on that later)....

 And I'll be posting more signs and backstories for my town soon....

The best-laid schemes o' mice an' men....

Well...that was interesting....

I just returned from a week summit for work in Atlanta, (actually Newnan), in the great State of "Jawwwwwwwwwwwwwww-juh", and well....things went horrible askew with my gaming plans.

Due to work issues I will be unable to attend Little Wars and thus unable to run my games.

So I had to send in the cancellation.

Sigh...

Hopefully next year will be better and I can attend.

However I am going to continue working on it...More buildings and production.

And have been entertaining the ideas of a new blog for the town itself.

Back to building and painting, and being ready to go next year.

More to come...

Building Crabtree: Saloon and Sheriff's Office/Jail....

A quick midday update as I am taking a break from the "assembly line"....

While the shop buildings are going well, I have started initial work on the next two buildings, (and indeed they are "important ones"); ie: "The Saloon" and "The Sheriff's Office/Jail".

First the place you wanna be on Saturday night: aka "The Saloon"....

A side view of the local watering hole for the townsfolk and anyone else that rides in....

Initial fitting and based weathered color of "The Paradise Saloon". The base coat is a burnt umber mixture with a layered dry-brush of a mustard yellow brown ochre color. Base color red is a multi-layering of Apple Barrel Paints of "Barn Red", followed up by "Deep Red", and highlighted with "True Red". Trim will be yellow. It's pleasing to the eyes of potential customers. One can see where the outside painting stopped as the either ran out of paint or didn't want to waste it by painting a part of the building that no one would ever really see. You can also the see the weathered boardwalk and the worn wood floor, scuffed by many boots on a busy Saturday night....

A front view of the place, (before the trim was starting to be added)...

A questionable fellow in a duster and toting a Winchester stands near the back of the "mostly painted" saloon. As with a lot of Western buildings, if the owner was cheap or not planning on being there, or just ran out of paint, they only painted the most visible areas to attract attention to "Their fine establishment"....Here they appear to have done just that.

An inside shot of the initial area of the saloon....

And now for "The place that you don't wanna be on Saturday night....or Sunday morning either!", aka: "The Sheriff's Office/Jail".

A side view, showing the weathered wood siding, front, boardwalks, and roof, as well as the stone rear area of the actual jail....

Men with guns....outside the Sheriff's Office and Jail....this could be trouble.  Here you can see the lighter "bleached wood/dirty whitewash" that helps give it variety with the other buildings.

Dang! First he's around the side of The Saloon, and now he's skulking around with that Winchester out near the back of the jail. What's he up to?
Oh and here you can see the difference in texture....

A front shot showing the coloring. Once again I am very impressed with how these buildings take weathering effects.

And finally below are a couple of comparison shots of the Sheriffs Office/Jail and The Saloon. Here you can see the first yellow decorative trim on the the windows.  Once done it's gonna look oh so purty.....

And on that note, I am off to take a break!

Let me know what you think.
More to come!

Building Crabtree: Construction Continues.....

A quick update on a quiet Sunday morning....

Yesterday was pretty productive on my town. The three shops came along well for their test fittings, interior paintings, and weathering for the third. 

I wanted to give the green a bleached out look, where you can see more of the color in the side areas which is protected by the trim.

Today I finish the outside painting on the two shops and then get to work on the windows and interior detail. Once this is done, I add signage, a final weathering and voila! The first three are done....

The assembly line process is good for initial building/base coating painting. However it is important NOT to get parts mixed up with each other.

The easiest way to keep this from happening is to keep the smaller fiddly stuff inside of the plastic bag until needed.

Looking down on the shops. The weathered wood looks quite good. I am pleased....

A angular view where you can see the weathered out green on the Stepped shop. Oddly enough this is easier to accomplish than I originally thought it would be.

While it is true that some buildings were "colored", (ie: "painted"), many of the more cheaper establishments either couldn't afford paint, or just didn't want to spend the money on it, so they had a choice of whitewash, or just leaving bare wood. If the business wasn't going to be there long term, they would just leave the wood bare as they would be picking up and moving on soon, when the goldfield went bust or the oil dried up, or the railroad passed them by...

Men with guns....on the streets (well boardwalks actually of Crabtree)....
Also I think i am going to give the middle building there perhaps a whitewash or cheap white paint job. The jury is still out on this one though....

A good shot of the front of the store, showing the weathering and bleached and worn wood. With these buildings, weathering is extremely easy...

This project, (though perhaps one of my biggest), also seems to be one of the most enjoyable. It is requiring lots of paint, water (for cleaning brushes), paper towels, and space, as well as the focus to paint a lot of things "dark umber brown" for an initial base coat.

But now that we are moving on with it, you (and me), can see the results, and to make things even more interesting,  I've also started on the saloon....

More to come...stay tuned!

Building Crabtree: First shop mostly done...

A moderately overdue update, (given the fact that I am behind schedule)....

Okay, as promised to you all, I am working hard to get the town going, but once again this thing called "Real Life", (and sub-classified as "work"), seems to be tossing in the spanner wrench again, it does indeed get very frustrating.

However with the two outhouses done, it was time to start getting the actual buildings done. For starters I am going with Knuckledusters "Small Shop" (X2) and Small Shop with Stepped Front.

A quick look at these and I did the initial base coatings to give them a worn wood look.

(It's amazing how miniature wargamers will paint a piece of wood to make the piece of wood actually "look like wood")....

Using some tips and tricks I have learned, I set up the first three to get an idea of what they will look like, and thus here for your enjoyment (and for historical posterity), is the very pics pics of "The shops of Crabtree"...)

The three shops side by side to get an idea of color and size. If you look at the shop on the right you will see that it is exactly like the one in the middle EXCEPT I made the windows two large glass sections instead of the numerous small panes. Well yuh gotta have a nice window to throw people through!!!

A close-up showing the staining and the way the wood took the paint colors. the variety is great and the wood weathers up quite nicely. Figures are for scale comparison...

So now that I had an idea what they would look like, I started actual initial painting and building of the first building (Small Shop with Stepped Front). 

While the building itself is simple, there are a couple of slightly tricky parts, and for those people like me that "want a little more well...the buildings can be modified. 

I've decided to put "window glass" in my windows for them. For some reason the idea of a western town with now windows in their window glass just kind of looks..odd...I also think that it will add to the overall appeal.

And yes, I will be adding a section later on how to do this....

But for now the first part...

A front shot of the Small Shop w/ Stepped Front  with the initial base coats and weathering done. You can see the wear on the boardwalk and some of the aging and weathering on the green and the outer trim of the store.

A side shot showing the building. Here I decided to use the Slanted Roof kit that you get separately to give it a little more flavor.  

A nice close up front shot. I am thinking though that in the future I am going to mount each of the buildings on a 2-5mm MDF board base to allow a "stepdown" into the street that is a little more pronounced.

And two more shots of the side, (one with flash), showing the weathering and how it looks so far...

An interior shot. This shows the worn floor, and a side wall that I need to paint to the correct color to match the other one (and the front), as well as the windows and doors interior which will be marked and showing where the windows will go....

A final shot showing the interior walls that are the color I want, as well as checking the size of figures inside of the building. This one shows off the weathered walkboards as well as the wear and weather on the building itself. 

Most of my buildings will be minimally painted, as paint was expensive in the Old West, and the elements played hell on lumber. Raw wood usually bleached out to a grayish-white color within 1-2 years at the most, and even painted wood, faded and peeled, so for attraction purposes the paint was used on the front, (and perhaps down a little of each side to make it "fancy".  

More will be coming to stay tuned!