One last facade

I've been doing a bit of work to finish up the facade of the central building in the Canadian Press complex.

Each of the floor drawers were painted with a sea grey, and window shades were cut from sheets of white paper were glued to the front of each drawer. Nothing exciting about those tasks, but necessary.

The main business that I'd been putting off for a long time has been building up the ground-level facade. Delay no more. One rainy morning I downed copious amounts of coffee and got to work.

I laid out a simplified arrangement of windows, doors, and framework on a thin piece of clear sheet plastic. Permanent ink Sharpie pens were used for the black lines, and some El Cheapo permanent ink, no-name pen from China was used for the silver framing. The silver ink wasn't as permanent as advertised, so I sprayed the piece with Testor's Gloss Cote. That fixed the silver smudging problem, but caused ripples in the black lines. Instead of discarding the piece and starting again as I should, I merely tried to strengthen the black lines a little more by relining them and continuing on. The black lines still have a little ripple, but I didn't want to lose my momentum by starting over. Live and learn. 

Acid-free construction paper was used to make the panels, which were stuck onto the plastic with transfer tape. Soloway's Hot Dogs isn't actually at this location, but I loved getting hot dogs at one of their outlets, washed down with a Dr. Brown's Black Cherry, with the guys back in days of yore, so I indulged in a little fantasy. The frame around the leftmost doors, the main Canadian Press sign, and all the doorhandles were cut from styrene.

To the back of the layup, strips of transfer tape were added. It was then just a matter of pressing the taped up piece to the ground floor clear acrylic wall, and presto! 

Construction is now more-or-less finished. I need to work out something for lighting the various floors as it's the lighting of the prototype that attracted me to it in the first place.