[15mm Sci Fi Terrain] Storage Building - Detailing

Continuing from yesterday, where I covered the construction of a 15mm sci fi storage building from miniatures packing materials, it's time to look at the process of detailing the building. The original construction was actually done over the span of a couple days a month or so back, but this part was a little less complicated and pretty much done in one little half-hour stint.

The first thing I did was to figure out what roof details I wanted and tried to come up with a way to allow some access to the building edges for the purposes of using the rooftop as a fighting platform. I had purchased a few of the awesome building fittings put out by Ground Zero Games a bit ago and this seemed like a fine time to make use of them. I didn't want to use them all up, so I considered some strategic ways to make use of them sparingly.

The first thing I did was lay down some cut corrugated alluminum pieces I had been given by a buddy who worked in a machine shop. These had been sitting in my bins for ages, waiting for me to find a use and I did. I made two rows of them along two of the walls, creating an elevated firing positin on two side of the building. This will create interesting tactical element to the building. Using the same metal bits, I also decided to build a rooftop access shed and topped it with a piece of corrugated sscrap booking paper to give it that ramshackled, lived-in look.

Once this was all set up, I then decided on which of the GZG parts I wanted to use. I chose a large rooftop ventilation unit, a length of horizontal ducting and a vertical chimney. The packaging is made with a wider flat spot to one side and this seemed like the perfect place for the HVAC unit. The horizontal ducting I set to the side of the roof access shed, gluing it to the shed for estra stability. The chimney was placed in the center of the roof to break up the way too open space that was created by the items set around the edge of the roof.

Thhe next part was the doors. As I was building this as a sotrage building, a set of double doors for the ground-level access made sense. A future building will be built as a garage/warehouse but I'll have to order some of the larger doors from GZG for that. The rooftop access could be a regular door and I had two types to choose from in he GZG stuff. I picked the one without a window. These are simple flats and glued on nice and easy though the door on the ground does have a gap that will need filling when I texture the base.

The very last thing that needed taking care of, after I had covered as much as possible covered on the roof, were the gaps between the roof base and the walls. I had already decided I was going to grit the roof as nearly every non-residential roof I had ever been on in my life (there have been many) had gravel on on it. This gritting gave me the excuse to simply run a bead of calking materials in the gap and then cover it when I gritted the roof of the building. The gritting was done with a simple coat of white school glue and a good, irregular spinkling of fine ballast.

So, that is it for the construction. A bit of a quick sanding to get rid of some of the stray calking and it's painting time. I am thinking of using some sand applied to the still wet base coat to make it look more like concrete, but more on that later. I should note that I am posting this pretty much as I do it now, so the next post may be a bit while I paint and finish the storage building.

Take care,

-Eli