Spinning Plates

Ground floor and first floor of the new build.

This week has seen a major upheaval in my household as we have my daughter and her family living
The outcome of this is that we have a lot let space and a lot of my own projects etc have had to be stored in my wargames room (now very crowded), but there are is also the more important tidying up to do after any hobby-related things I do - no more leaving things out until tomorrow!  It seems that scalpel blades and 3 year-olds are not compatible!
with us (and all that that entails) as she has had to vacate her own place and has to wait for her new home - probably sometime early next year.

Some of the ground floor walls

I am still managing to get a few things done though!
I've made some progress on my new build (The Federal House from Stoetzels) but wasn't that inspired reading through the initial instructions that it could take some two hours or more to build. The initial cutting out of the ground and first floor floors walls etc. (and edging them too)  took at least that amount of time! (and there's an attic too).

A very "wrong" wall

My wry smile took  a down-turn as a worked my way through the model and realised that one wall was mistakenly labelled and there ere also a host of other minor (very minor) 'problems' with the model. I'll talk about these though later, but as an example, one of the walls, (shown right) has a major 'problem' with it (though easily fixed), as it's an internal corner but allows for a wall attached to it (the blue rectangle).

Aaarrrggghhhh!

Further work on this model had to be halted as I ran out of glue and when I came back to the build, after tidying up I'd accidentally stuck  a scrap of foamboard to two walls - duh!
I couldn't repair the damage and now I have to await the re-printing of these two walls (luckily though they're on the same page - so just one copy needed.)

Undercoated chopper, with Sid for scale

I did manage to grab the chance of a clear day to undercoat my helicopter, so that's coming along slowly but surely - though I'm not entirely sure why I used #2 son's gloss black instead of my own matte black as an undercoat !

My solitary palm tree

 In other news I have started to try and accumulate some scenery for my pirate project as I didn't think my single (rather pathetic) palm tree would hack it.
Evil- bay was my friend in this and I found some very reasonably priced palm trees for about  £4.50 (including p&p) for 2o of he. - each approximately 13cm (about 5").
The most surprising thing was that they were from an English supplier (from Basildon IIRC) and cheaper than some very similar models from China , so I went ahead, splashed the cash and bought two bags of them!

40 Palm trees - woohoo!

Sid and the Palm trees

I guess for the price, you get what you pay for, they're bright, very plasticcy and have a shed-load of flash on them, but they'll do the job just fine imo.
I'm as yet undecided as to how to base them and will be considering all the various options carefully an will also be awaiting further varieties of palms sometime next year. (who knew that there were so many different varies and models of palm trees ?
It also turn out that plastic palm trees can be waved bout with great abandon and glee, though whether as fairy wands or dolly feather dusters, you'd have to ask my grand-daughter
(they're in a safe place now though).



So, progress then, and although little has been made, in the quieter moments I've been working on my abstract ship-to-ship rules -something which I enjoy but is made difficult without having a friend as a 'sounding board' for my ideas and checking the rules generally.
 I also been busy designing some builds for a project I (and probably every other Zombie gamer) has sought since I started  down this track, but more of this as I make some proper progress and have something tangible to show!

That's it then for this week - things can only get better - right ?

Thanks for reading through or at least for visiting and looking at the piccies and as always your comments are both welcomed and appreciated!