Bob and Emily’s couch

I’ve been thinking about building a model of the Chicago office tower where Bob Hartley, played by Bob Newhart, had his fictional office in The Bob Newhart Show television series. From what I can tell, the building has undergone an extensive facelift since the ‘70s when the series was shot, so digging up information is a bit of a challenge. While wandering down a dead end on one archeological expedition, I had a look at some pictures of furniture Bob and Emily had in their apartment, and thought it might be interesting to try and use their couch as a prototype for a couch building project for the Oceanview Hotel. I needed 6 – one for each floor – but after I had built 1, I had had enough of what turned out to be a rather finicky construction task. So, I have 1 ‘Bob and Emily Hartley’ couch on the 5^th floor of the Oceanview Hotel and need 5 more couches so guests don’t have to sit on the floor :-)

Here are a few pictures from the project,

[Here's the original. As you can see from my heavily 'weathered' version in the top photo, mine should probably be put out by the curb on trash day.]

[I started with some drawings to figure out how it would look. I used our own family room couch for some basic dimensions.]

[Here's the pieces for the frame. They're cut from 0.020 inch styrene]

 [Here they are glued up and ready for 'cushions'.]

 [And speaking of seat cushions, here they are! It doesn't look too comfortable.]

[But, when it's placed way up on the 5th floor, and obscured by figures, it's useable.]

The Oceanview Hotel is not earthquake proof

Last night I was rolling the layout to a position in the workshop where a section I wanted to work on would be directly underneath the lights. While moving the layout, making sure it wasn't going to crash into a wall, I pulled a little too hard, rolled over some unevenness on the floor, and the Oceanview Hotel (which, ironically, was temporarily being stored on the layout board to keep it safe while I worked on something else at the workbench) toppled over and crashed to the floor! Luckily I was able to find all the pieces except one window pane, and although most of the windows popped out on impact, all the individual units were intact, although some were a little scraped. I'm going to take a little break from building over the next few days to bring some order to a workshop that has none since I've got a number of projects on the go, and I don't want any further destructive testing done on any of them :-)

The Oceanview Hotel: Painting

As well as being able to paint the El Camino pool during a warm snap awhile back, I was also able to do the base coating of the Oceanview Hotel. At first I thought I could brush paint the hotel, so I went ahead and made a trial on one of the floor units. Bad idea. The result was too gloppy even for me - all the nice window detailing was obliterated by the paint. I immediately dropped it in a bath of SuperClean to scour the mess and get back to the original plastic before spraying.

All the units that make up the hotel were sprayed with Krylon light blue. After the paint was dry I then went to work on painting the vertical elements with Tamiya flat aluminum, the floor edges with Poly Scale aged concrete, the inside walls with Tamiya grey-green, and the ceilings with flat white.

[That's what's left of the original gloppy paint job after soaking in SuperClean and scrubbing with a nail brush.]

To tone down the exterior colours a bit, some very thin washes of black were applied. It also helped to pop the window frame detail a little.

Although the unit exteriors were spray painted, the interiors were still painted by hand. First, I tried using a fine brush for that work, but it was very tedious, and I kept getting paint on the exterior surfaces. I eventually decided to use Microbrush swab applicators instead of a brush, and that made the job easier, faster, and far more accurate. The trick to using these things is to first dip the applicator head in the paint, making sure the handle doesn’t get paint on it, then, lightly dabbing the paint-filled applicator head on a paper towel or tissue until you see the applicator’s pointy bristles sticking out through the paint. This indicates that the excess paint has been removed and you’re ready to apply paint to plastic. Lightly wipe the applicator head on the surfaces, painting the widest window frames first, and the narrow horizontal pieces last when the applicator is almost dry to minimize the chance of getting paint on the exterior surfaces. Using a magnifying glass for this task makes things even easier. Now, if I had been smart, I would have pre-sprayed all the components before assembling, and that would have made painting quite easy; however, I really didn’t have a master plan when I started this project and just built-up the components as I got ideas about how to proceed – which in the end meant that interior painting became something of a chore.

Lightly coloured construction paper was used to carpet each of the units. This gave the floors some subtle texture that simply painting them wouldn’t, and also allowed the joints of the plastic pieces used to build the floors to be disguised. The combination of a white ceiling and very light gray flooring brightens up the interiors of the units. The floor of the ground unit was painted black, decorated with some curvy white lines, and then coated with Future to give it some shine.

The elevator doors are simply a picture I found searching the internet, re-scaled to HO, and printed. I lucked out because the wall colour around the elevator matched the colour I used to paint the elevator shaft – a happy accident. The edges of the door pictures were touched up with a little wall colour paint to make them blend a bit better.

The windows are cut from clear plastic and glued inside each window frame with some Micro Kyrstal Klear and a little superglue. This was a fairly big job since there are 26 panes that had to be cut and installed.

The roof-top satellite dish is an item from a broken toy that was repainted and weathered a little. It’s a bit on the thick and out-of-scale side, but it doesn’t look too bad, and this building is more of a caricature than a replica.

Standing back and looking at the tower, it’s not too bad even if it is just a caricature, but I think it needs some additional exterior paint or decoration to make it pop and give it some character. Also, the optical fibre I ordered awhile back finally got delivered last week, so I’m also giving some thought about how to use it in this building..

I haven’t glued the units into a tower yet. My plan is to permanently glue the base to the lobby unit, and then the first floor onto it. The sixth floor will be permanently glued to the roof unit. However, all the other floors will only be rubber cemented together so they could be easily pried apart for interior access. The elevator shaft will be epoxied to the base.

[Title page from E. L. Moore's Clarabel Hotel in the February '74 issue of Railroad Modeler.]

There’s going to be some interesting interior detailing work ahead. When I started on this project it reminded me of E.L. Moore’s Clarabel Hotel that appeared in the Feb ’74 issue of Railroad Modeler.

I made a start on that project when I was a kid, but it was far too difficult for me – and I had this weird idea of facing it with some ultra cheap, ugly, vastly out-of-scale brick paper I had bought at a deep-discount sale at a local hobby store which didn’t help things – so I abandoned it. Mr. Moore did a lot of interior detailing on the Clarabel Hotel, and the Oceanview Hotel will no doubt present its own unique challenges.

The Oceanview Hotel: Basic Structure

The Oceanview Hotel is a caricature of a boutique hotel – and a destination of the passenger service of the Lost Ocean Line - built using leftover window moldings from the Mr. Scott’s build. I had a large collection of extra window frames since I had drastically reduced the height and footprint of Mr. Scott’s to fit a particular location on the old layout. As well, the donor kit for Mr. Scott’s came with many extra parts, which further increased my window frame stash, and it seemed a shame just to let them gather dust.

After playing around with the frames it looked like a simple tower could be built just by gluing them into squares and stacking. The frames are a 9 scale feet high, so although the ceilings in the tower floors wouldn’t be generous, but they at least wouldn’t mimic floor 7 ½ in the Mertin Flemmer Building shown in Being John Malkovich!

The window frame connectors are built up from I-beam styrene pieces, and the floors are made from 0.040 inch styrene sheet stock. The central shaft for the elevator and utilities is also built up from 0.040 inch sheet, and is reinforced with glued-in square-section stock running the entire length of the piece.

The Oceanview Hotel would have lots of organizational and design problems if it were a real hotel, but I was pleasantly surprised by its look once I stacked up all the floors and stood back for a good stare. I’m moving on to painting and detailing. Also, if I can find a source of cheap LEDs I might try my hand at adding some lighting.