For those of you who have been following my progress on my train room, you will be gad to hear that I am almost ready to begin painting. The room isn't quite empty yet but I've decided that is will never be empty because I have too many things and nowhere to store them except in the middle of the train room. So there they will stay until I get the benchwork and the shelving and boxes to store most of this stuff in.
I've mentioned that 60 inch long dresser I have that sits against on wall of my train and how it seems to have grown roots there. I've decided I can't move it and so I am going to paint around it. It will sit uder the layout anyway and be covered by the layout as well. I'll know its there and it's unlikely that anyone will be able to see that that wall isn't completely painted anyway.
So what paint will I be using? I bought it at the local Home Depot in College Point, Queens and it's made by Behr. I don't recall the exact color but its a light blue and and it will represent the sky. I will be using Glidden ceiling white to represent the clouds. I've seen a number od demonstrations of how to blend white and blue to create a beliveable cloud pattern and they look easy but I expect that these methods were developed by folks who are very experienced painters and may not work for me. I'm going to try anyway. And given the fact that I can just paint over what I don't like or doesn't come out well and start over I am not to concerned with experimenting on the walls. Of course I will do my experimenting on the lower portions of the walls that will be covered by the benchwork, so anmy mistakes will not be there fore all to see. The benchwork will cover about 36 inches of the walls so I have plenty of room to experiment.
As I've said in the past, the benchwork will consist of stands for the Woordland Scenics Mod-U-Rail system. These stands are made of precut and drill wood that fit together nicely and become sturdy units that can hgold a good amount of weight. I wouldn't advse standing on them but they will hold at leaast 50 - 75 pounds of weight. The problem is these stands provide no shelf space below their tops. Shelving can easily created by cutting 1/2 inch sheet plywood to size and simply placing that on the lower supports. That is what I am going to do with each of them. THose shelves should store lots of things including a tool box, building kits, scenery supplies and other odds and ends.
I also plan to buy a few more of the plastic drawers that come in units of 4 to six and ride on wheels that you see in Staples, Office Max and other stores like that. These arew too tall to fit between the shelving I'll be installing on the bechwork stands and top of the stands, but I've found you can remove on set of drawers and put the top back on to make them fit in the 27 inches of space left over. These drawers can hold lots of stuff and give then amount of space I'll have available, I figure I'll have more than I need.
Right now I am off to tape the room to keep the blue from getting on the ceiling tiles, windows, doorframes and floor. I am using 3M blue painters tape so I expect that I won't have many ares that will need to be cleaned off. I'll let you know what happens in a few days.
Irv
