I had mentioned in a previous post that I wanted to create a balcony for one of my small buildings. I’m happy to report I’m almost all the way there.

I started with the brick building from an old AHM 5879 Minikits set. My goal was to dress it up like a building in Virginia City.

I designed the balcony in SketchUp Make. Sliced it with Chitubox. Printed it on my Elegoo Mars 2 resin printer.

It came out pretty nice. It’s 3 separate pieces—the balcony, railings, and posts.

As you can see in the design, I placed the printing supports on the undersides of the pieces. Those areas are always the roughest and need a bit of sanding with emery boards. By putting them on the areas that are mostly hidden, I don’t need to spend too much time cleaning them up.

In addition to the balcony, I decided to create a cornice. Many brick buildings in that era had separately applied cornices to give the building more gravitas.

Before I added the 3D printed details, I painted the brick walls to look weathered. Part of that was to add thinned beige paint and let it flow into the mortar lines of the brick. You can see in the pictures below what a difference that makes.

I also added wood flooring to cover the stone tiles in front of the building. I used coffee stirrers and painted them shades of grey and brown.

I painted the balcony a cream color so it would stand out against the darker walls. I like the effect.

 

The building is almost done, but I still want to add signage. That’s coming soon…