Project Mancave: Stage 1 complete

And The Builder said, 'If the foundation is weak, do you wail and gnash your teeth? Do you ask it to repour itself? Nay, you tear it down and begin anew. So shall it be with with all My Children, whether they be Stone or Flesh.' 
- Thief: The Metal Age

So, I mentioned when we moved into our new home in the spring that the place had an old barn and that I would start work to convert the place into a workshop/gamespace/mancave. I have been working on it an hour here, an hour there and thought I'd give you an update on what's going on.

I've now completed Operation Tabula Rasa, that is, to tear down all internal structures in the barn and prep the place for the actual building phase. Initially I was supposed to just lay down some wooden flooring on top of the old, but the space really was a bit low vertically so I decided at the recommendation of my father to dig down some 30-40 centimeters and lay down a proper concrete floor. This gives me more headroom and a much better floor for the workshop. All that was needed was some good old fashioned toil, but I'm getting ahead of myself.

The first step was to clear the would-be workshop of all the accumulated junk stored there.

The barn, built in 1947 had originally housed cattle, but my parents converted it into a stable in the late 90's. The horses have been gone for a couple of years but they left their mark. I shoveled some dozens of wheelbarrow loads of old, dusty manure and bedding before hitting the old sand/rock bottom of the barn.

Next, I took apart the old enclosures and hauled the bits out. A sledgehammer was quite useful at this stage. There was some material I might be able to recycle later but I think a musky cavalry odor might follow.

Once the old structures were cleared out I got into some proper work. The old floor consisted of a top layer of sand, followed by a layer of tightly laid stones varying in size from fist-sized to the size of a man's torso. After that there was more sand and gravel until the target depth was reached. Prying the stones loose with an iron bar and hauling them out was by far the most difficult part on the project so far, but at least it teaches me that we have to work for the good things in our life.

"You see in this world there's two kinds of people in this world my friend. Those with loaded guns and those who dig."

After the floor was dug to the correct depth and evened out (my friends were already warning me against delving too greedily and too deep), the last thing to do is to scrub the ceiling with a steel brush to make all the flaky old paint come loose. I'm not in a hurry to get to that part yet though, I just need to get the floor done before winter kicks in.

At the moment the space is about 7*8 meters so I'¨ll have plenty of room in the finished workshop. I've booked my friends to come help me lay down the concrete this saturday. After that, it will be smooth sailing, right?

More epic Space Marines complete

They're so easy to paint up I couldn't resume doing the greeks just yet but did some more of these. I almost feel lazy. I think the weathering powder works really well to make the models look like they're on a dusty desert planet. Here's what I have completed so far:

Two formations of tactical marines, their Rhino transports and a commander stand. These incorporate the ones I showed you in my previous post. I accidentially put them on 30mm washers instead of 25mm washers like I was supposed to, so I had to do a quick rebase. I also reduced the amount of figures per stand from five to four to avoid cramping up the smaller base. Good thing I noticed the wrong size at this point!

A formation of devastators, a formation of assault marines and a dreadnought. These along with the tactical marines constitute a Space Marine company as far as the official fluff is concerned. I decided to base my army around the "real" organization as I haven't read the rules yet.

A formation of Land Raiders for some heavy support. I haven't done weathering on track before and I'm quite pleased with the results.

These models already make up 1400 points for Epic where 3000 points is the "standard" size of the army. That means I'm almost halfway there. All too easy. I'll have a learning game with 1500 points coming up in Warcon. Good thing I'll have all my models completed way in advance this time!

First 6mm space marines done

I got a bit excited about the 6mm epic space marines I got so I had to paint some up and get it out of my system before resuming work on the greeks. The figures themselves were super quick to paint and even though I spent more time on the bases than the models, I think I did this tactical detachment in two hours tops.

I went for a Mars/dusty desert look using Vallejo powder to help me out. What do you think? Nailed it? Note that I ran out of varnish before doing these so There's nothing to fix the dust in place yet.