47 Ocean Blvd: Kibri 38222 is finished!

Finally, after 7 months of on-and-off work, the apartment is done! I temporarily set it up at the corner of Ocean Blvd and Cedar Heights Ave to see how it looked. I see lots of opportunity for weathering, street furniture and other open air stuff, but it's not looking too bad. 

There's quite a number of parts in this kit, and it isn't a shake-the-box project like W. E. Snatchem. It could be built box-stock, but I've made a number of small changes to make it more at home in a Toronto-Ottawa setting.

The assembly instructions are good, so I won't go into a play-by-play of how I built it. But as you can see in the photo I still managed to install a wall component upside-down. It turns out that it didn't matter to the structure; although, if you're familiar with this kit you'll note something looks a little odd. I leave it as a test for you to identify the part :-)




As for changes I made to Toronto-Ottawa-ize it for the Alta Vista TC, here's a list,

1. Painted the walls a common bricky-red. Window and door frames were painted a contrasting green.

2. The store signs were changed to common ones I've seen here over the years and might make sense as the store-level on this sort of building. There's a dry cleaner, convenience store, five-and-dime, and cigar store. The kit's fru-fru window coverings were not used. Instead, pieces of white and off-white paper were cut and installed. They make the windows appear more like those you'll see in real life. Well, ok, a couple of the kit's paper curtains were used as well as some slices of gift wrap to provide a little contrast in the windows and account for human eccentricity :-)

3. The kit's base wasn't used because I wanted the building to sit flush with the sidwwalk. The base would have introduced a step that I feel would appear out of place. Some strip styrene had to be added to the foundation to fill holes left by the missing base.

4. The interior scenes are photos sourced from the internet and seem like ones I might see here. The interior pictures included in the kit are a little too sketch-like for my tastes.

5. A large air conditioner was added to the roof as were quite a number of items from Walthers roof details accessory kit, #933-3733. The items I chose to add had nothing to do with reality, and were stuck on to give the somewhat barren roof what I felt was an air of complexity and an interesting pattern.

6. The kit's exterior light fixture mouldings seemed a little too ornate and were left off.

Some extra work was done to add interior LED lighting so the stores don't look abandoned and the apartments seem lively at night. 

There are 4 light strips: 3 are inside styrene boxes, and the 4th was glued on top of the stores' light box, pointed upward to give some general interior light to the front windows. Window curtains and pieces of black card have been used to diffuse and block light to provide a pattern. 

The stairwell light boxes have blue filters on front - made by inking some clear plastic with a blue Sharpie pen - to add colour. 

The roof is removable so I can add more lights or service those already installed.

In the end, like all kits I build, there were a few parts leftover that I have no idea where they are supposed to go :-)