Walls go up at Mel's

Drill bits and optical fibres arrived in the mail a few days ago, so work resumed on Mel's Drive-in.

After studying the main building walls for awhile I decided to extend them and put a sloped roof on top. I figured that since this Mel's was going to reside in a northern clime, it might be good to have a sloped roof to prevent snow accumulation. The extension would also help hide the fibres I plan to install in the sign. This is a picture of some early plans at figuring out what to do. As you can see, I was focused on having the roof slope towards the circular restaurant, which would give winter diners a big surprise when a snow load cuts loose! 

The new wall pieces are cut from styrene sheet embossed with brick glued to 0.030 inch sheet plain styrene. I completely replaced one kit supplied wall with a new brick one. I didn't want to just put a brick top on the kit's stucco walls as I thought it would just look like a hat on the basic structure. This way it looks more integrated, and goes with the small brick walls that make up the dinning room.

The stucco portion of the walls were sprayed with Krylon Riverstone. This colour is pretty close to the raw colour of the walls, but what the Krylon does is dull down the finish. Once dry, I dusted each wall with Krylon Gold to help emphasize the stucco texture.

The main sign was drilled out with a #74 bit in order to accept 0.5 mm diameter optical fibres. The letters are brushed painted with Tamyia White.

I cut out the floor from the base for easy access to fibre and power. The dinning room floor was sprayed with white and then dusted with gold when dry.

The dinning room doors were brush painted with Tamyia chrome paint. After the paint was dry, a line was scribed between the doors to simulate the gap, otherwise they look like a window frame and not a door.

Here the walls are partially installed. The lower parts of the walls are painted with the same brick colour as the main wall extensions. The floor holes that lock the little walls in place had to be opened up a bit with a knife as the mouldings were a little uneven and not completely clear.