Slow and Steady. Did I Mention Slow?

Well, here I am again over a year after my last post.  Progress has been made both in the basement and other parts of the house and property, but the pace feels glacial at best.  Kids are a lot of work, and for every bit of joy and love that they bring into your life they also like to put you on the full-spectrum roller-coaster every now and then and tax the bejesus out of your energy and patience... so, yeah, that's my excuse I guess.

On the layout front, I've managed to complete the installation of all necessary supports for my valance as well as finished the process of hanging the valance, with the exception of a couple small gaps.  I'm also nearly complete on the installation of some corrugated white plastic sheet that I've fastened to the floor joists behind the valance.  My hope is that this will finish off the inside enough that operators won't focus on it too much, while reflecting light well and also be simple enough to remove if need be.  We'll see.  The ceiling in the basement is only 7'2" or so, and I really wish it were 8' to allow some more flexibility in this part of the design... oh well.

I'm also ready to install the drop ceiling in our work room, which will contain a portion of the layout as well, so this is going a long ways toward bringing this phase of the project to some sort of completion.

Below are a few photos of the valance and plastic sheet "ceiling" in progress.

MDF valance installed, view from aisle.

 

Same section of valance viewed from inside.

 

 Valance on east side of layout room with corrugated plastic sheet

and lighting installed.

 Bubble end of center wall with valance and lighting installed.

 

Closer view of plastic sheet on ceiling behind valance.

I will need to do some basic trim work to finish off the ceiling to wall joint with the plastic, which will probably be some simple lattice or small quarter-round painted the same color as the backdrop. There are some additional narrow pieces of MDF valance that I will attach to meet the full-height valance on either side of the lowered ductwork section that spans the layout room.  Behind this, I will try to mount some LED strip-lights that hopefully match the rest of the layout lighting close enough so that those areas are not too heavily shadowed. After that is complete, I plan to paint the aisle-side of the valance black and will more than likely install black ceiling tile and grid over the aisle as well.

 

It was a busy summer out of the basement, which is how it normally goes, but I did get the importunity to flex some much-needed hobby muscle between railfanning and a few good air shows. So despite the lack of updates here, it's been a great summer and I'm looking forward to getting back into modeling mode now that fall has arrived.