Construction Photos

And so it begins! The first photo illustrates several changes to the room.

After clearing out the old layout we repainted the walls a bright white. (They were a medium blue before). I then had an electrical contractor come in to add to the 9 lighting pots in the ceiling. There are now 38 lights in the ceiling fitted with 15 Watt OttLites. The result is 15 Watts less power consumed than the previous 65 Watt flood lights and there are virtually no shadows in the room anywhere. I also had a commercial grade carpet installed over the hard concrete floor.

The next step was for Tom Thorpe to start measuring for the benchwork. Once we had all the measurements, he installed a ledger board that the benchwork will sit on. It was laser leveled because the floor isn’t completely level.

Jaini and I decided to install the background before the benchwork this time. So I installed my own set of ledgers above Tom’s and we proceeded to install 1/8” hardboard around the room. What you see in the photo above is the area I call Creek Junction. The hardboard is glued directly to the walls and I used short screws to hold it in place until the glue set.

Step 2 – The Backdrop

We did a lot of soul-searching about a background for the layout. On the previous layout we just painted the walls what we felt was a “sky blue” and went from there. I put up all the benchwork first and then worried about backgrounds. Bad idea! Some sections were nearly impossible to reach. We decide this time to do the background first, before the benchwork went in.

We had received a background package from SceniKing for review which appeard in OST#40. The SceniKing backgrounds are inkjet prints on legal size paper resulting in “panels” that are 8”w x 13”h. We tested the “Treeline” background which looked very nice when finished. Price per square foot for this background was $4.82.

We needed almost 60 feet of background for the new layout and I just could not see us pasting up 8” wide panels for 60 feet, plus I want more than 13 inches in height. That lead us to Backdrop Warehouse. I have to say their website is one of the worst I’ve ever seen in terms of navigating around to find what you want. It took perseverance to figure out how to get around the site but it was ultimately worth it. The BW backgrounds come in several varieties and the most common are backgrounds and backdrops. The difference between the two are the number of color inks, image resolution, and cost. Backdrops are more costly than backgrounds. Compared to SceniKing’s backgrounds, the BW images are 35” high and can be up to 12 feet long. I liked the idea of a 3 foot high background image so I bit the bullet and went with BW’s backdrop. We bought five 12’ long images to cover the 56’ and a bit left over for later. The photo below shows the backdrops installed. There is a seam in the images but it is not visible. These backdrops combined with the OttLites result in a stunning vista. When you’re in the room it almost feels like you are actually outside. We could not be more pleased. The cost per square foot (which included shipping) came out to $5.50, not that much more than the legal-sized panels. It was worth it.

Next…The Benchwork