WIP - Sarissa Precision "Atomic Gas"

 Call it a Gas Station, Petrol Station, Fuel Parlor (someone probably calls it that), it's a must for any urban or post-apocalyptic table. My wife was kind enough to get me Sarissa's "Atomic Gas" Gas Station for my birthday last month, and I've been slowly working on it over the past few days.

the catalog image, non-derelict version

 

I say slowly because the weather's been really uncooperative, with days and days of smothering humidity punctuated by torrential rainstorms. Which has made getting things primed extraordinarily annoying!

Worse, I'm nearing a point where I'm going to have no choice but to stop until the weather cooperates; I don't want to glue the walls together until I have plastic sheeting glued into place for the windows, and I don't want to glue the windows in until the walls are varnished (so that the varnish doesn't frost the windows). And I can't varnish the building when the humidity's sitting at 86% for 12-15 hours at a time. So I'm painting as much as I can, getting the paper flooring glued down, and obsessively rechecking how the parts fit together. 

I'm also working on some furnishings (purchased from Miniature Building Authority) as you can see here - out front there's a locked cage for propane tanks (not yet primed), as well as a reach-in freezer filled with bagged ice. Inside, I've got a top-down freezer filled with ice cream (placed in impulse-buy range of the front counter, just like in the gas station up the street from my apartment) and a vending machine:

There's a bit of a story here - "Big Red" is an American cream soda, only available in certain markets, mostly around Texas and Kentucky. The flavor is frequently mistaken for bubble gum, but is apparently a mix of lemon and orange oils and vanilla - and it's awful (or at least, a not-easily-acquired taste). My wife's father loved Big Red, and more than drinking it, he loved tricking other people into drinking it. I'll never forget his booming chuckle as he watched me take an unsuspecting sip of it. 

So presented with the flat expanse of the front of this vending machine, I knew I wanted to paint something, and while looking at photos of '90s era vending machines I remembered this syrupy nightmare drink, and decided it would be funny to have a vending machine filled with nothing but Big Red (and a discontinued variant, Big Blue) awaiting the unwary, thirsty customer. The red also pops against the green-and-white scheme I chose for the gas station as a whole, drawing even more attention to it. 

Looking at the weather forecast, I don't expect to be able to do any more priming or varnishing until Friday at the earliest; I might try assembling a delicate resin chair to put behind the counter, and I'm waiting on a resin cast toilet to arrive to put in the back room. I'm hoping I can maybe have *most* of the gas station done by next Monday.