The Elevator Building is actually...

From RMC Nov '85

 ... the staircase tower in Vollmer's Modern Parking Structure kit #770-3802. Back in May 2019 I made many wild speculations as to the Elevator Building's roots and was dead wrong on all counts. Hilarious!

Some Speculation on the Elevator Building's Roots

This is the back wall. It looks rather charming with the elevator insert in place. 

This is a weird little building. Scale-wise, inside it probably only has room for the elevator and those back stairs, and not much else. Maybe it was part of something else. My thoughts are that it was once the side entrance to a 4-storey motel, and the main motel part is missing.

Those side doors would open into long corridors that have the rooms branching off. On the model there's no provision for attaching a fire escape, so I guess they must lead to internal passages of some sort. 

This would imply that there's a 4-storey piece with the rooms and some sort of main entrance out there somewhere. But, for now, it'll just be some little odd apartment along the Alta Vista TC. 

Maybe it's where Ed Bryce holed up after his divorce and early days at OSI :-)

Elevator service restored at the Elevator Building

Once spray painting the main components was done, all that was left was some detail painting, reinstalling the front steps, and inserting the cardboard elevator print. I was going to scan and colour adjust a new elevator insert, but in the end decided to use the original - I liked its retro, time faded colours.  

I need to shoot a few more pictures to see how it fits in with the other Alta Vista TC buildings.

And I still don't know what company produced this kit, or when it was manufactured. Apparently this is one thing the mighty internet has not yet learned about.

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 :-)

The Ups and Downs of Renovating the Elevator Building

I call this the Elevator Building because that's what the gentleman who sold it to me for a Loonie called it - ok, technically it was his wife that sold it to me, but he did call it that :-) On-and-off over the last few weeks I've been working on turning it into something for the Alta Vista TC. I should maybe say 'restoring it' as it's clearly something from the '60s or '70s, but I have no idea what that something is. I haven't been able to identify it.

Some parts were loose, and some were glued on beyond all hope of prying off. So, I pried off what I could and took a look. What was left was glued together crooked, and too strongly to be pried apart any further without risk of serious breakage. To get the main structure to stand up close to straight I did a lot of sanding on the bottom to get rid of the tilt. It still isn't a perfectly vertical structure, but it's much closer than it was.

From that point I tried to sand off the glue blobs on the inside of the windows, polish, and then coat them with clear acrylic floor finish. After a couple of rounds, that considerably reduced the blobs, but didn't completely eliminate them. I can live with what's left. It was then on to masking off all the windows for spraying. I used Tamyia tape for that.

See down there in the lower left. That white piece of plastic is a bit of new window frame I had to create and glue in as the frame was a little too brittle, and my attempt to pry out the windows was a little too aggressive. I gave up as soon as that little piece broke free.

I did most of this work - well, it was more pleasure than work, but the language is what it is - over Record Store Day weekend, so I had to pop-out to buy some vinyl in between sessions of applying masking tape. I've played Treasure Island over and over, and still need to give Mr. Jobim a spin. 

Dollar architecture

Ok, well, only that thin apartment on the left was $1; that squat thing on the right, that might have once been part of a motel, was $2. This is more than I usually buy at most swap meets, but I was pleasantly surprised at today's finds. There are no manufacturer's marks on either, but I suspect they're both German - and that 8150 may help with identification. With a little enhancement they'll fit right in on the Alta Vista TC.