Painting the Elevator Building

In the last instalment I had started to mask the Elevator Building in preparation for painting. The idea was to spray it a brick-like red, and then coat the window and door frames with an aluminum coloured spray.

First, I finished off masking the windows. That sliver of a window down in the lower right was a little tricky. 

Tamiya masking tape was used throughout. It's great tape, but a bit on the pricey side, so the initial cost of $1 for this model is starting to climb. I didn't buy any spray paints for this project; I just used colours from the leftover sprays I have in the workshop.

The first thing was to spray it with Tamiya's fine white surface primer. I use that on all plastic projects. It is indeed fine and doesn't clog detail. And it's also tops at revealing imperfections that require correction before final colour coats. I did see a few little flaws after spraying that I took the time to sand and fill.

I don't have any action shots of the box being sprayed red, but you can get an idea of what the red coat looked like from this photo taken during the application of more masking tape and plastic wrap in preparation for spraying the window frames. I let the red dry about a week before applying the second round of masking.

Krylon aluminum coloured spray was used for this layer. Several light coats were applied over the course of an afternoon. When done it was left to dry outside for a couple of hours. This year I'll be getting an outside spray tent to contain the overspray from reaching the garden.

And there it is prior to peeling off the masking. It looks a little grim at this stage, but, as you can see in the opening photo, I was pleasantly surprised at how things turned out. It's important to have a little faith :-)

A long time ago Galen posted a comment here noting the direct way a coat hanger was used as a paint stand. I think I replied with something like: "I've always painted this way". Well, I'll spill the beans, I got the technique from this book published by Revell in '73. I bought my copy back-in-the-day from the toy department at Simpsons Cedarbrae. 

The coat hanger as spray stand was item #14 in the opening chapter called Basic Modeling Procedures. My mum was not so thrilled with what I did with the coat hanger she lent me, so I had to make sure I didn't lose it because there wasn't going to be another :-)