Structure Build: Walthers Commissary Building Part 3

In my last post I left off with all the parts painted with a coat of primer. Since then I've separated out the brick pieces and hit them with a coat of Rust-Oleum "claret wine" spray paint. It came out a bit darker than I was thinking it would, but I'm more than happy with it right now. I did run into one small issue with too much paint getting on a couple of sections and filling in the mortar lines. To fix that I had to wash off the wet paint and try it one more time. That seemed to work and I had all of the brick pieces ready for the next step.

A look at all of the brick parts after initial painting.

A close up look at the brick texture after painting.

The next step was figuring out the best way to paint the mortar lines white. In the video from Southern8099 he used a 50/50 mix of acrylic paint and alcohol and just brushed away the excess. I tried that and am still not sure I really like the results. The biggest problem came when I was trying to wipe away some of the excess with a magic eraser and it actually began bringing up the red paint making the mortar turn pink. I think I will try a 50/50 mix with water and some dish soap to help the mixture flow into the cracks. 

I say I'm not sure if I like the results because one of the smaller pieces I tried actually came out looking perfect. This piece can take the place of one of the rolling doors on the loading dock. I'm not even sure if I am going to use it, so it made for a good test piece. It looks great and doesn't really have much of the pink effect from the red paint mixing in. 

An example of a piece that looks great with the mortar lines painted white.

A side by side comparison of my first attempt at painting the mortar lines white.

So for now my next step will be trying to fix the pieces I don't like. I will also try the 50/50 mix with water on the other pieces that I haven't started yet. Hopefully something will work and I can move forward with this project and get to some assembly soon. In the mean time, I've been doing some brainstorming and think I have some tweaks coming to the layout for this project. Nothing major, but some things that will affect the overall look of it.