Monday, September 17, 2018

Progress Report - 17 September 2018

Progress photo - September 16, 2018. It's starting to look like something other than a pile of wood!
After a seemingly endless process of painting and staining the legs, painting the walls, and then assembling the IKEA shelves, the layout has finally started to look a little less like a pile of lumber and more like a layout. Or at least the underpinnings of a layout. 
As I've mentioned before, one of the main goals for this layout (dictated by my wife - although I completely agree with her) is that it should "Look like a piece of art or furniture and blend in with the rest of the space."
We opted NOT to use the curtains under the fascia since decent looking curtains would not only be expensive, but they would actually detract from the non-cluttered look we're going for. 
Early tests with black for the IKEA shelf legs and under the layout was far too stark so I deferred to Christine's color sense. She chose a Sherwin Williams color called "Riverway" (SW 6222) for everything under the layout. The shelves are stained a light shade (Pecan) in order to allow them to pop a little. 
Ultimately I plan to use the IKEA shelves in the "entry" aisle shown here for display purposes for some other models and collectibles. But for now they're serving as staging spots for track, roadbed etc... 
There's one section where the benchwork is 12" wide - IKEA brackets secured to the inside of a 1"x3" "L" and painted to match the wall are more effective than individual legs or shelves.  
There's no need to have all the benchwork built on the IKEA shelves (which could get pricey). Using the IKEA Ivar shelf system is working out well - as you can seen here, most of the time you can use a short set of Ivar as shown here, and then bridge the gap to the next set of shelves or even a single support leg.  
A lesson learned from trying to string wire on previous layouts - lay in the buss wires now. ran a pair of buss wires and a second pair of wires (most likely for lighting and the like) around the entire layout now - before the subroadbed was in place. 
So far I'm quite pleased with how everything looks. 





11 comments:

Chris Adams said...

Looking great Marty! Really like the clean look.

CVSNE said...

Thanks Chris.
The trick will be keeping it that way. My inspiration is Paul Dolkos. He remains the only modeler I know who took a photo showing the completely clear underside of his layout... and didn't need to do any clean up beforehand. I only aspire to such an accomplishment.

Matt Forcum said...

Good idea foregoing the drapes. I've never like how drapery looks. This is a much cleaner and more modern solution.

Bernie said...

Looks good. Alicia likes it too.

Jerry said...

That really is nice looking. A great idea!!

Jerry

Matthieu Lachance said...

You know what? It's nice to see a layout in construction that doesn't look like a junk yard or a building site. It's probably much more engaging for you to actually do some work and see the results and not the mess.

renegourley said...

Heres another idea I've learned to go with your bus wires: solder a bunch of feeders to the bus wires before the roadbed goes down too. You'll probably underestimate the number of feeders required, but you can save yourself from most solder-in-lap incidents.

Unless you're using suitcase connectors of course.

Jonathan Jones said...

Looking good, Marty. If you have no curtains, are you going to store stuff on the shelves below the layout? If so, how will you keep things looking neat and tidy?

Jonathan Jones

CVSNE said...

Jonathan,
although for now I'm using the shelves to hold track, screws, and the like, ultimately the shelves will be used to display some railroadiana and other collectibles. "Storage" will be in the IKEA cabinets under some sections of the layout OR on shelves in the storage area of the basement!

Greg Kujawa said...

Looks really good, Marty. The paint color you selected for the sky looks great in these photographs. Can you share what paint brand and color you are using?

Thanks!

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