McDonough Structures

Wrapping up the last building for the Maiden Lane portion of The Hills Line. McDonough Structures provides new construction and remodeling services for residential and commercial projects. Their warehouse sits between East Third Street and Highland Avenue south of the industrial spur.

McDonough has had a variety of paint schemes over the years. During my modeled era it featured a flat gray appearance with a reddish-brown trim. Fortunately it’s a simple manner of replicating the look using a variety of construction methods.

For the core I went back to the tried-and-true method of using PVC trim boards. While this isn’t a high impact area, such as the Surroundings Interiors corner, laminating concrete block sheet works well when it has a strong support to attach to.

Roof supports and the concrete block sheets from JTT Scenery were cut with my Cricut plotter. I also used it to cut the rather unique trim pieces that run the length of the sides, as well as the concrete pilasters. Multiple copies were laminated together to get the necessary depth, which is a major advantage of using computer-aided design.

The Cricut was also used to cut the openings for the two freight doors as well as the single personnel door on the east side. Pikestuff components were used to fill the gaps. The roof was built from a single piece of Evergreen corrugated sheet metal and trimmed with styrene strips

Subassemblies were then painted with various paints and stains to best match the prototype, then assembled with gap filling CA glue. Weathering was done with PanPastel chalks and an India ink and isopropyl alcohol wash applied with an airbrush.

While I had to downsize the very cool chimney on the south side of the structure, the north side did get the usual assortment of electrical and gas utility connections from Walthers. Additional details and signs were built based on prototype photos, including the private drive signs in the alleyway, and the large business sign along Highland Avenue.