Grandpa Lee's Miniatures
How To Preassemble At last we're finally going to start building this kit. I've intentionally chosen a "Hard To" kit for this project in order to demonstrate a number of special techniques not required with easier kits. If you can follow along here you'll breeze through any other kit. So let's get started!
Dump it out Sooner or later you'll have to swallow your fear and open that box. Like going into a cold pool, you can torture yourself a toe at a time or your can just jump in and get it over with quick. That's what we're going to do right now - just dump it all out. Dig out the instruction booklet and give it a good once over, but don't expect too much elaborate detail. As you dope things out feel free to add generous marginal notes and actually jot in dimensions as listed in the individual parts descriptions usually found near the end of the booklet. This will greatly minimize the chance of making a major error.
Out of chaos comes order Stack all parts in more or less logical groupings such as putting all the milled siding pieces together, all the long sticks in a group, all the triangular pieces in a stack and so on. In this type of kit you'll notice several large sheets of thin material from which many smaller pieces are to be punched out. The outlines of these smaller pieces are pressed into the semi-finished surface of low grade thin plywood with what are called steel rule dies. Unfortunately these dies are often not as sharp as they should be after extensive use in production by the kit maker. As a result you have to use
reasonable care in punching these parts out to avoid damage. You will probably have to use a razor knife to deepen the outline for the proper separation of many pieces. The booklet will tell you otherwise, but it is OK to carefully cut from the back (or rougher side) to ease separation and minimize splitting. The booklet will also tell you not to punch out any small parts in advance of their need in order to avoid loss, confusion, and out of sequence assembly. However, for the sake of efficiency, I recommend you knock em all out at once, sand the finished surface and edges, and dump them all in a shoe box. You will know when and how to use every one when the time comes, but take care then to always glue die cut parts with the finished surface facing out. Finally, save the sheets from which these parts came for the time being as most have useable areas from which you can cut out replacements for damaged or lost parts and for extra trim of your own design if you so choose.
Pre-painting & sub-assembly About now you'll have to pause a moment to think about your exterior color scheme. Following the colors on the big box picture is usually not a bad idea, but don't feel bound by it. I'm sure
you can come up with many attractive alternatives more to your liking. For the best coverage you might want to first prep all surfaces with a wood sealer. Ordinary paint brushes work fine, but use a sprayer if you have one on larger panels. Then paint or stain as many parts as possible before final assembly because having to keep lines straight between colors on glued assemblies later is an ugly and tedious job; usually not done well. Other small and obvious sub-assemblies such as the doors and windows as shown here can also be completed, but not installed at this time. Because all interior surfaces except the floors will be covered later in the kit we're building, one could alternatively assemble the entire shell, run the electrical tape, and then spray paint the whole thing, inside and out. By priming the inside in this way we prevent any chance of the tape showing through the wallpaper later, but we don't want to add electrical outlets yet, and the floor and all other installed areas that may already be prefinished will have to be carefully masked before spraying if we choose this alternative method.
Floors One final note about the floors. You may notice in this photo that they appear to be made of oak stained planks. Unfortunately, this type of kit comes with plain pressboard floors and the illusion of floor boards was created here with a special tool in order to "dress up" this particular kit. You can get a somewhat similar effect with a store bought wood laminate appliqué, but these are expensive and in my opinion they never look quite flat. Instead, when it's finally time to finish interior floors you might want to consider carpeting or simulated tile sheets which all have a reasonably natural look.
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Grandpa Lee