Prepping the New Layout Room | Workbench Wednesday

[Music] Howdy Folks Dave here at Thunder Maes studio with an update on how things are progressing here at the new studio space specifically I wanted to show you how we're moving forward on prepping the new layout room the new model shop is all ready to go at this point but one of my favorite things about this new space is that there's a separate room for the model shop and one for the layouts but unlike the model shop which is all neat and tidy this back room needs a little bit of work before we'll be able to move the model railroads in here now the space came with these massive wooden shelves and those are the first things that need to go but with the saws all and a Little Help from my lovely wife we'll get those out of here in short order [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] now I am saving all of that Lumber to possibly use on future projects but at the moment my next area of concern now that the shelves are out of here is this gap down here where the drywall doesn't quite come to the floor there's a it goes from about a half an inch to a one inch wide gap down there and you know Arizona is home to all sorts of creepy Crawley so we want to seal this up and make the uh the interior of this room as tight as possible so my plan is to fill this Gap in with this expanding polyurethane foam uh but before I do that I want to go back and uh use the shop B to get any loose material that might still be hiding down in there [Music] now this is great stuff but it's also kind of nasty so I want to make sure to take all the proper safety precautions read and understand all the directions before I start squirting it out of here you don't want to get this stuff on your skin anywhere because if you do it's you're going to need acetone to get it off and putting acetone on your skin isn't that great either so first first things first we need to shake this for at least a solid minute and the stuff is going to expand quite a bit as it sets up and fill all of those gaps then after it cures I'm going to need to come back and uh cut off uh any excess that's squirted out here key is to you know keep it moving as much as you can Gap gets bigger down here towards this end the floor is not completely level it has a little bit of a slope to it for drainage reasons now we'll let this set up and see how we did it this stuff will cure completely solid in about 8 hours but I'm not just going to stand around and wait there's another little PR here that needs my attention in the meantime there's a great big crack in the concrete floor here it looks like it's gotten worse over time as the building has settled and I'm going to want to fill that too for this job I'm going to be using some of this dap liquid cement crack filler this is what the guy down at my local hardware store recommended so I'm going to give it a shot I've already cleaned the crack out with the shot back the best I can can and giving this a good shake so let's see how it works yeah the package says it's self-leveling but I do have a putty knife standing by just in case given the depth of this crack probably going to have to do a couple of applications at least in some spots it's like filling up the Grand Canyon here okay I think I'm going to let this settle and then I'll go over all of it again with a with a second application now after a couple of applications and letting it dry completely in between this is how our crack looks it's not a perfect repair but it is a vast Improvement so all in all I'd say this product works pretty well the expanding polyurethane foam has also had a chance to dry completely and now I need to go back and remove all of this excess that oozed out uh the best tools I found to do that is actually a uh a fine tooth razor saw or any any uh serrated edge knife will work I just like a fine tooth because it doesn't make as much of a mess and uh you know utility knife just cut straight down from the top all the way down then back underneath by the way this is an old razor saw which I I don't use for um hobby building anymore in case you were concerned with me running it along the concrete floor here [Music] [Applause] [Music] okay now I can think about adding some new baseboards down here but what I want to do right now I think is just hatch and fill these holes in the drywall best I can using some good old spackling compound there are a lot of holes I'm not trying to be too particular or precise here just getting some spackle back inside of these holes and then when it's dry I'll come back and sand everything flush now I'm under no illusions that uh I'm going to be able to turn this wall into a nice smooth surface to paint a backdrop on the those shelves that were in here they really did a number on this drywall the really the only way to uh repair this properly would be well not the only way but probably the most expedient way would be to just resurface it with a veneer probably U you know quarter inch drywall over the top and you know ret tape reud uh you know refinish the whole wall now since I don't own this space I don't necessarily want to invest that much into it as far as you know completely refinishing the interior um but I do want to get it to a state where you know it'll look good and and work well uh for the model railroads in here so uh I do have a plan for the backdrop here and we'll be getting into that in just a minute okay that's already looking quite a bit better I think I'll let all this dry overnight come back tomorrow do some sanding we'll be well on our way [Music] [Applause] once again not perfect but it is a lot better I think now I'll put the baseboards on [Music] I say that is an improvement each one of these little jobs is an in incremental Improvement on the space now the plan is to put the Thunder Mesa layout on this side of the room all along this back wall and coming around the corner over here and I want to have a backdrop with coed Corners in it so how do we do that well fortunately I remember reading about the backdrop that John Allen installed on his famous gory and defeated layout and instead of you know drywall or hardboard or something like that he actually used vinyl flooring with the backside turned out let me show you what I mean so here I have a 36 foot long roll of vinyl flooring 12T High by 36 feet long pick this up down at my local Home Center I bought the cheapest one that I could get and the idea here is you put the pattern side the side that would normally be facing up when it's installed on the floor against the wall and the backing side out so you've got a clean fresh surface to paint your backdrop on now first I want to start with a nice square cut on the end here and fortunately this checkerboard pattern makes that pretty easy stuff is pretty easy to cut with a utility knife and a straight Ed and now I need to measure and cut the entire roll this way so I end up with a piece that's 70 in high and 36 ft Long Easy right this is probably going to take a minute okay we've got the vinyl cut to length and now comes the fun part hanging it on the wall so the idea is to hold it in place to the studs with some drywall screws and some quarter inch washers hopefully we don't rip the whole thing [Music] [Applause] a [Music] a [Music] okay that went about as well as could be expected we've got the uh the top of the sheet anchored to the wall into the studs up there but the bottom is still kind of free flowing because um what we want to do next is apply construction adhesive uh to the walls to secure the vinyl in place up snug against the wall surface this is going to be a permanent installation um I kind of wanted to have a backdrop that I could take down and take with me but the size of this makes that impractical if if it was smaller you know I could make it out a hardboard or something like that and have it be detachable and take with me uh if I move here from here but um given the size of this space it just made sense to make it a permanent in ination so we're going to be gluing this to the wall going to basically lift this up and roll glue onto the walls behind it and then kind of press it down and squeegee it into place you know this may not be the best way to do this um but it's the way that we figured out so we're going to go for it so this is the goop we're going to be using to adhere the vinyl to the walls this is some Henry 356 adhesive uh it's kind of a pasty consistency specifically formulated for sheet flooring carpet and vinyl flooring like this uh it's designed to go on the floor of course on you know flat surfaces we'll see how it works up on the wall and uh to apply it got a couple of foam rollers on uh extensions should make life a little bit easier all right first thing I'm going to scoop some of this out into this painting tray now you're supposed to apply this stuff with a trowel but you're also supposed to apply it on the floor so we're Breaking All the Rules here oh I need gloves hang on again this is stuff you don't really want to get on your skin on your hands on your face in your eyes anywhere like that you see it's quite a bit thicker than paint I'm using these thin foam rollers the idea being that I don't want the big fluffy you know paint rollers for this want these to be as thin as I can get them get a nice even coating of the glue on here the nice thing about it being this thick is it's not going to drip very much I'm going to ask my lovely assistant here to pull this out from the wall don't lift it up just straight out there we go I just need to be able to get up under here basically only doing a couple of feet at a time so much for my theory about it not dripping going all the way up as high as I can okay should actually go pretty fast once we get going okay I'm can go ahead and lay that down let that fall now I'm going to use a clean roller without anything on it yeah this is going to really bring all this together I think it's bring the whole room together it's gonna bring the whole room together and flatten this out up against the wall and uh and the idea is if there's any bubbles or anything kind of work them out towards the ends and I can always yes that's drywall tape nothing I can do about that we'll put a mountain there okay now for the next section so that's basically the way it's going to go uh I think we can time lapse the rest of this [Music] [Applause] [Music] he [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] okay well this glue is going to need to cure for about 48 hours and then we'll be about ready get some paint on here so now we have a nice Cove on the corners and a nice flat surface to work with and of course everything from about here down is going to be hidden behind the scenery on the layout once all this is dry I'll come back and cut out around the breaker box here and put the face plate back on unfortunately that can't be repositioned so you know I'll just paint it to match the rest of the backdrop you know I love it when a plan comes together you know I don't want to give anybody the impression that this was easy uh sometimes when you watch the time lapse and you see it Go just just like that you might get the impression that this was an easy project this was not easy this was hard to do and I wouldn't have been able to do it without help and I want to thank my lovely wife nah so much for helping out she truly is one in a million and I am so lucky to have her um I'm well aware that you can see some of the diamond pattern here through the vinyl but uh I think once it's primed get a couple of coats of primer on there uh you won't be able to see that and you know we'll be able to uh to paint it we'll have a nice painting surface to work with for the backdrop but that is going to have to wait for another video because I need to wrap this one up I want to thank you all so much for watching today for joining me for this you know preparation of the new layout room it's going pretty well I think it's a I think when when all is said and done this is going to be a great place to relax and play with trains which is what it's all about right until next time uh you can also follow Thunder Mesa over on Instagram at thunder. Mesa and you know check out the resources available on the Thunder Mesa Studio website at Thunder mesa. Studio as always a huge shout out and thank you to our patreon members who helped to make these videos possible keep moving forward my friends adios for now [Music]