Suburban Renewal

[NH Mike]

This is one of those little projects that seem to find me once in a while. This house was on a sort of diorama of a hunk of poster board along with some really horrible plastic trees. Somebody had built it and gave it to my boss at work. He offered it to me. I have no idea what sort of glue was used but luckily it didn't hold very well although there was plenty of it. I completely took it apart and scraped all the glue from everything and cleaned up the parts. Reassembled it properly and added glass and shades to the windows. Front door was pretty crude so I replaced it with a Tichy 2 pane door. Two windows above the garage were beyond saving so they were replaced with Tichy 2 over 2 that closely matched the rest of the original windows. The sides at the roof peaks looked a bit tall so I added some Evergreen strip styrene for trim boards. Brick foundation and chimney were detail painted with morter lines added. Paint is a mix of CN yellow and reefer white. Trim is dark brown and the shutters are black. I have no clue as to the origins of the kit as nothing about it looks familiar inside or out. Eventually it will become part of the next area on the layout which will be more of a small residential area than industrial.

 

[goscrewyourselves]

Looks like a nice model and in top condition from the photo's.

 

[Jim 68cuda]

The house is by Model Power. Your build looks much better than the original appearance. Nice work.

http://www.legacystation.com/HO/display_product_MPW584_584-Built-up-Sinatras-House.html

 

[NH Mike]

Thanks Tony & Jim. The house was white plastic with blue shutters and a sort of grey roof. Nothing was painted. The odd thing is it has no back door. I didn't bother to add one since I'm not planning on the rear being seen when it is put into its place.

I just checked that link Jim. Even that pic looks better than how I got this one. I'm guessing this was in kit form originally and built by a non modeler - poor fit of parts and thick clear glue all over it.

 

[NScaler]

Looks great. Nice upgrades! I see plastic models built up all the time and I always look to see if I can make something of them.

 

[Gary B]

As of late this has become my favorite kind of project, re-habbing other peoples discarded structures. Fine job Mike, looks really good. Its not what you start with, its what you end up with that counts.

 

[Charles Smiley]

Some of Model Power's items are worth a look.

I found this Model Power "Bob's Hotdog stand" at a bargain price and hacked it into a likeness of a place I liked as a teen. This was an easy model to put together and upgrade a little too.

 

[mantua mike]

I think some of the model power kits are re-issues of older kits, maybe AHM or someone like that. I just built their "old coal mine". I liked the building itself, but the base and coal pile looked too "plastic. It was easy to reconfigure the supports to fit my layout. Am going to add some "real coal" and think I'll be happy with the results. All in all not bad kits for the money in my opinion. God knows I seem to always have one.

 

[NH Mike]

Thanks again guys for the compliments. Upgrading old plastic kits is a lot of fun and with today's range of detail parts do in fact turn out rather nicely. Some years back a friend gave me a box of what could only be called train set junk from what he had as a kid growing up. The usual broken and missing pieces on almost everything. Here is what I made out of one of those by adding a garage front and a couple of shallow side walls to create a small background building. A roof piece was added to the main structure and a few Walthers roof details along with a vertical tank and piping. Most of the garage portion was built from left over excess building pieces and scrap box items.



This is the only Model Power kit I ever bought and built to use as the diesel fuel service in the engine yard. A simple kit so I added a pump and motor with valves and piping and a hose to connect it to a tank car for unloading purposes.