Post 100! and it's a biggie!

Well, despite what I said in my last post - temporary-absence - I have been able to take some piccies to share with you all, and when I realised that this would be the 100th post on this blog, I thought that I'd better make it a big one!  So, below you will find pics of the progress I've made on my Stoelzel's Structures Food Market, what I've done on their Local Pub (not much!), the bits I have ready to build from their M.U.C.K., the first unrealistic attempt at their Storage Unit Building and pics of the hospital beds from Grekwood Mini's that I got recently.

So then, onto the pictures! first up, to the right, is a view of the Food Market as it is at the moment. The structure itself is more or less complete, but as the other photos below will show, the interior and a few more details have yet to be done. As usual, Zombie-Me is in the pics to illustrate the size of the build. This first pic, shows the sign that I created for the build. A clearer view of it is below (somewhere!)

In the first pic, you saw the left and front of the build and this second pic shows the right side, with Zombie-Me on the roof. The roof that I've used is not the roof from the Food Market - this one comes from the M.U.C.K.  The roof in the Food Market has some stuff printed on it that I didn't want to use, so I opted for this one instead. Although I've 'glazed' the building, I haven't yet put the doors on ...

... as you can clearly see in this pic. Also, the fire escape needs adding - that's it next to the build in the pic to the right. Along with the fire escape will be a ladder that I've not done yet. I'll also add a ladder to the roof, so it can be accessed by combatants.

In this next pic, the roof has been removed showing the interior of the first floor. I was surprised that there would be a room with no windows, but I guess it's a storage room. I'm going to furnish the windowed room as an office, and try and fit a small toilet at the end of the corridor where the window is. I'm really not sure that there will be enough room though ...

The pic to the right shows the first floor after it's been removed along with Zombie-Me in the front room. Once more I've used 2mm thick card for the vertical walls, as it gives plenty of strength while being narrower than the exterior walls, as I think the interior walls should be. Although - IIRC - all of Stoelzel's Structures have this lift-out interior floor design, this is the first one that I've built in this manner. Unfortunately, I don't really like it, so my future builds will have stacking floors, each level having the exterior walls attached to the floor.

Onto the staircase. This is at the rear of the building and, as you can see in the pic to the left, is sandwiched between the exterior wall and an interior wall. It is quite narrow, and the 2 floor walls on each side make it quite difficult to get to.  However, as you can't actually see the stairs from the front, this did allow me to not bother with the vertical parts of the steps themselves.

Not having them present also enables a figure's base to be held in place on the stairs as you can see with Zombie-Me to the right. This is quite helpful, and I think I may use this again on future builds.

Onto the ground floor. The pic to the left shows how little furniture I've put together so far. In fact the shelf units that you can see are required to hold up the first floor, so they had to be there! The shelf units are actually double sided, but these ones are glued to the walls to keep the first floor in position. I do intend to make furniture, just not sure when ...

And here is a 'ground-level' view looking through the (absent!) front door. I think the shelving works pretty well and Carl's done a good job with them!

As promised way back at the start, here's a pic of the sign that I created for the shop. Hopefully some of you might recognise the name and the nature of the offered delivery service, but I don't think many from the far side of the pond will!

The model actually comes with a canopy for the front of the store and, although I made it (as you can see to the right), I decided not to attach it as a) I thought it would be a real pain to do as it had bowed :( and b) it would be a liability when storing the building.  I may revisit this at a later date though ....

That's it for the Food Market. In conclusion, it's a nice building that I'm glad I built - not that I've finished it yet!  If I were to build it again, I would certainly have made seperate floors, but that is my personal preference. When I originally built it, I didn't cut the windows out, but this made the ground floor interior so dark I felt I had to cut the windows out - which was a real pain when all the walls had been glued together!


Now then ... the Local Pub from Stoelzel's is next. I've not built it as yet, but I have made a start ... although that's only gluing the exteriors and main floor onto foamboard!  This pic to the left has the ground floor itself with exterior walls

This final pic of the pub shows its exterior upper floor walls

Here we have the main parts of the first building from Stoelzel's M.U.C.K that I intend to assemble. I'm not sure if I'm going to use the recessed entrance for it or not ....

Another M.U.C.K. building awaiting assembly ... although this one is about twice as deep as the first, it is narrower

And the last of the M.U.C.K. buildings I've assembled parts for; this will be quite a bit bigger than the other two.

And now onto Stoelzel's Storage Unit Buildings. I mentioned in my last post that renting some storage space for myself, gave me some ideas for this build. Unfortunately, I didn't realise how impractical they were until I'd actually started making it. To the left you can see the ground floor that I put together. That's an A1 sheet of black foamboard that I used for it, and none of the piece has actually been cut away ...  It was only once I had this done, and, as you can see, started on the walls, that I realised 2 things:

1. Where the hell would I store it?
2. What interest would a storage building of that size actually be in a game?

So since these pics were taken, I've revisited my plan and will now make the building (more-or-less!) the same size as Carl's design, although it will have 2 floors.

To the right is the modified main entrance that I put together for the building, complete with opening doors!

And to the left is the first floor that I started on before I came to my senses ... again this will be considerably smaller when finished.

And - at last! - the final group of photos in this post - the hospital beds from Grekwood. I got the mega-bundle of all the beds they do, and to the left is a group shot of them all after I'd finally got around to gluing the 'undercarriage' to the beds themselves.

I do have a question though ... these next 2 photos both have beds that have vertical panels at their sides. Of the 16 beds that I got, only these 2 have the panels.  Are they supposed to be like that? or is this flash of some sort?

 

So that's it for this post, not sure when I'll be able to post again ...

Temporary Absence ...

Well apologies to my followers, but I've been absent from my blog for two weeks now, and probably won't have another substantive update in the near future ...

I'm still waiting for the exchange of contracts in my home move, and in anticipation of that, I have packed most of my possessions and put them into a storage unit I've hired (which has given me some insights into how I'm going to build my Stoelzel's Structures Storage Unit Buildings, but that's another thing to do at some point!).

So until then, although I might be able to post some pics of stuff I do manage to get done, the (ir)regular posting of this blog will have to be suspended.

Back from Holiday

Well, I'm back from my holiday in Scot-the-land and had a really good time.  Went to several places, including:

• Deep Sea World, Scotland's National Aquarium which has a spectacular 112m (IIRC) underwater tunnel - the highlight of which was when my daughter realised a shark was swimming over her head!
• Edinburgh Castle, a very splendid castle with some fascinating regimental museums as well
• Falkland Palace & Garden

But the best place - for me anyway - was Scotland's Secret Bunker. A real surprise as the first I knew about it was signs to it on the side of the motorway. Intrigued I looked it up on the net and we went there. Apparently it was built in the early 50s and eventually it became the destination for the Scottish government in the event of a nuclear war. As it had become obsolete - 30m of soil being not enough to protect it from modern bunker-busters - it was sold of in the mid-90s and the new owners have made it a museum.

The surface guardhouse was built to resemble a Scottish farmhouse and gives no clue to the extensive bunker beneath it:

And it certainly is extensive! This (blurry :( ) pic shows a plan of the top floor of the bunker (The orange parts are still restricted and cannot be accessed by the public), and there are another 3 below it!  (Although the bottom 2 were sealed off before the bunker was sold)

For anyone interested in modern warfare or post-apocalyptic gaming, I would heartily recommend a visit to this place. Along with seeing it, you also get a wealth of information about the capabilities of a place like this - e.g. the air-conditioning system can change ALL of the air in the bunker 14 times every 15 minutes!!, the 3m concrete shell surrounding the bunker has tungsten rods every 30cm to protect the structure from a nuclear blast's EMP, etc ...

If you get the chance - go there and be sure to get the audio guide if you do!

edited: for Mathyoo's benefit, here's a pic of a shark that I took while in the underwater tunnel at Deep Sea World:

no progress ...

Well I had a call from the estate agent late Friday. Apparently my move is getting closer - at last I'll be out of rented and into my own place! So I didn't get much done hobby-wise over the weekend. Instead I packed pictures, filled the holes and admired my Grekwood order that arrived Saturday morning, which, as I placed the order at about 3.30pm on the Friday, was amazingly quick!

But no photos of anything :(

And tomorrow I'm off on holiday to sunny scot-the-land for a week. I've yet to find my passport or get euros - I think I might have left it a bit late!

Anyway, I hope you all have a good week doing whatever you're doing, and I'll post again when I'm back

update ...

Apart from finishing sticking my new ships to their basese, I've not accomplished much of anything recently. Work has been a b*tch and home-life has not been great either ...

[end self-pity mode]

However, this weekend I intend to finish off my Stoelzel's Structures Food Market or, at the very least, take some photos of it to post here on Monday. So more then.

Until then, have a good weekend!

edited 3.15pm 31-Aug:  I've just put in a huge order with Grekwood to try and cheer myself up - hospital zeds'n'beds, plus some 40mm baddies to kill my greeks! pics when they arrive

Stoelzel's Structures' Hospital part 2

I first posted on this build pack in this post - stoelzels-structures-hospital, and in my last post - sickness-strikes - I threatened to post the updated photos of the build and here they are.

To begin, there are pics of the exterior before the recent changes:

 

And after:

As you can see, I've opened up all the windows (and 'glazed' them!) and have re-skinned the building so that the pairs of windows at the sides of the 1st and 2nd floors are now singles. I've done this with the windows on the ends of the hospital as well. I did this for 2 reasons - first, and the main reason, I was too lazy to cut out 4 windows for each room [ ;) ] and second, I wasn't going to have enough wallspace for what I wanted in the rooms if there were 4 windows in it.

So, to the first of the interior shots which are of the Director's office. As a reminder, this pic is a 'before' shot, showing the director's office - the 3-walled room at the bottom right of the pic:

And these pics show the now furnished office from 3 angles:

These next 2 shots show what I've put in the Records office (the room at the top left of the last 'before' pic). The tape drives on the machinery is now out of date, but I like them - makes me think of James Bond films!

Here we have one of the patients' rooms. The beds are the 120% version which fit very well, as are the cupboard/wardrobes. You can also see I've added the in-houose brain-washing/conditioning entertainment system:

Now pics of the 'Control' rooms that are on the 1st and 2nd floors. I've covered the fire extinguisher that is printed on the wall with a folded version and added a security monitor add gun cabinet - all of which are from the Stoezel's Modular Lair 2, IIRC:

As well as furnishing and 'opening' the windows, I've also added a room to each floor. It niggled at me that there were no toilet facilities in the building, so at the left end (as you look at the front of the building from the outside) I've added a wall across the corridor, a window to its end and tiled flooring (from Stoelzel's Modular Mansion, IIRC). I had to move the doors into the patients rooms adjacent to this new room sideways to create a room of any worthwhile size. The left pic below is to illustrate where this room is - at the right side end of the corridor - and the right pic is of the room itself:

And finally, a pic of the furniture I've added to the reception area - namely a bank of chairs and a coffee table. These are also from Stoelzel's but I m not sure which!

So that is the 'Clinic' as it currently stands. It's still not finished - the Personnel and Finance offices in the extension need furniture - and without conscious decision I seem to have furnished it more for an RPG or 7TV game than for a zed-based game, but I'm happy with it!

Sickness strikes ...

I recently posted a long list of Stoelzel's Structures that I'm planning to build, but unfortunately a bout of sickness has struck that will prevent me from completing that list ...

Yes, once more the wargamer's curse - "Ooh-Shiny"-itis has struck ... I found out that there is a wargame based on the battle of the Atlantic called Convoy available.

As this is something that I've always had a hankering to play - No, I don't really know why! - I had to (of course) buy it and all the supplements for it and some figures!

So instead of building, I've been reading the rules, ordering figures and generally getting very excited about yet another new project!

Before this struck though, I did manage to furnish most of the clinic that featured in this post - stoelzels-structures-hospital - so I intend to photograph that tonight and post on it tomorrow, before I start posting on my latest obsession.