Room Paint Colors

I've had some inquiries about the paint brand and colors used for the sky and benchwork. 

For everyone's reference, mostly mine, they are shown here (click on image or caption to go directly to the Sherwin-Williams web page):

The room walls above the benchworkare Sherwin Williams #6793 "Bluebell"

The walls below the layout, and the legs of the IKEA Ivar units, are Sherwin Williams #6222 "Riverway." (I plan to use this color for the fascia).

Stubby Peninsula

A quick update on progress down in the basement. 

Most of the subroadbed in the "yard" and "town" areas - those sections where the terrain will be basically flat - has been installed. I temporarily propped up plywood in all the areas where the subroadbed will be cut to fit the track and taped large strips of paper to the plywood. I'll arrange flextrack on the paper, trace around it, cut it out and use the result as templates for cutting the plywood to shape.  
As I was positioning the track I realized it might help to have at least the first section of the peninsula in place to ensure the track curving onto the peninsula landed on benchwork and not on the floor. Luckily I'd pre-painted the components for the peninsula so when Stic stopped by the weekend before last we got the first 8 feet or so of the longer peninsula attached. In order to give some additional stability to the peninsula I used an IKEA Ivar cabinet. This will be useful for storing layout construction and scenery supplies - although the bottom shelf of the cabinet will house a couple of (heavy) boxes of magazines. 

Video Layout Update #2

For those of you interested, I just posted a short (about 7 minute) video update. 
This features a quick pan of the layout area, showing the benchwork in its current state and then does some minimum radius testing on both a CV 2-8-0 and, just for fun, a 2-10-4. You can find it at the link here, or by clicking on the photo below. 
And if you like the video channel please consider subscribing and leaving a comment!

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Wordless Wednesday #203

Wordless Wednesday #202

Wordless Wednesday #201

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. 


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