Project Update

I don't have any pictures to post so instead of doing separate post for each project I am putting all projects in one. Hopefully, I will be able to take some photos tonight.

Wanda's.
Progress is somewhat slow. It is kind of do one thing and set aside for a day to dry at this point. Over the period of past almost two weeks I made new base, "dug up" the tree from previous base and "planted" it in the new one, weathered, installed, and ballasted track, made new road and covered all surface with Sculptamold. I wanted to apply dirt over Sculptamold last night but the road was still wet so I didn't take any chances. In addition to all mentioned, I have made power pole, prepared a transformer and a cross arm. I have yet to figure out how to run power lines into the building. I can walk outside and look around but I am afraid it may be too contemporary.

Elijah Roth.
With Wanda's being slow I have made quite good progress making EJ. For the base, I painted and installed water chute, made wood platform that goes over some kind of  water reservoir that is next to the chute, painted the water wheel. I didn't have Floquil Roof Brown as suggested in the instructions so I mixed Rust with Rail Brown for the water wheel. After applying first coat I decided that it didn't look like rust at all so for the second coat I used just Rust. Now it all looks like covered in fresh rust. With help of A&I and weathering powders I think I can make rust look older. For water in the reservoir I used Liquitex heavy clear gel which is too heavy for this purpose. My ripples turned out to be to high but it was only gel I had. I wonder if I could have thinned it a bit. Well, it doesn't matter much since it will all be covered pretty much anyway.
I have put mill walls together as well. Before that I painted inside black where lighting will be installed so it doesn't shine through. I also tried new way of gluing in window  glazing I think it worked quite well. Some time ago Dave Frary suggested dipping glazing in Future floorwax to get more glass like appearance. Acrylic in the Future acts as bonding agent as well what is quite time saver too. I wanted dirty windows for this project. Therefore I used Modelmaster matte acrylic instead of Future. After acrylic dried I dusted windows with chalks to get dirty looking windows.
Since I have mentioned lighting I am going expand a little bit on the subject. My idea is to have welding light coming out from inside of the mill. It wouldn't be difficult to achieve since there are commercially available boards that do just that. However, I want as well outside and inside light dim and flicker in sync with welding light. Being embedded programmer I have always wanted to make some gadget outside of my work scope. I think this is perfect opportunity. So far I have figured out that I need 4 or 5 LEDs - one outside warm (yellowish) very small, one blue and one cool white for the welding light, two warm white for the inside. I am not sure about blue light. This is something I saw at NNGC Hickory few weeks ago at Microlumina table. Welding light starts with blue and turns to white as it continues. I will play around to see if it is something I really like. I plan on using ATtiny micro controllers from Atmel. I am not sure if ATtiny4 has enough program memory for everything. Next step up is ATtiny9 which has twice as much. I still need to figure out few other things before placing an order for the parts and programmer for the micro controller.

Fat Jimmy's.
I installed front porch roof. I used shingles painted in various brown colors suggesting it being somewhat new. I am not sure if I like it. Something is bugging me about that. I think I'll just go over with shoe dye solution to add some gray silver tint.

Majestic Hardware by Bar Mills.
This is new old player. New because I haven't introduced it on this blog. Old because it is almost finished. It really needs one weeknight which I have problem dedicating it to Majestic exclusively. My intention is to do one or two small steps every night but I get caught up in other things. Finally, past weekend I shingled up three overhangs that will go over the doors. Originally there was only one but I am not sticking completely to the instructions. Other changes include a shed and extended platform.

Saw Pit Store by JL Innovative Design.
And this one is completely new player. I have been commissioned to do it. I had a choice of several other kits but I picked this because I wanted something quick this time. The kit came in the mail past Friday. To my surprise it was an older edition. The walls were all precut with circular saw I think. However, windows and doors were just marked and needed to be cut out. Some sanding of the edges was needed as well since there was a lot of fuzz. After all this I stained all wood with Sherwin-Williams driftwood stain replacement. I don't have particular preference for driftwood but I bought entire quart of it so I will be using it for quite some time until is gone.