The Wet Bar

I've been building the new benchwork over the past two weeks in between holiday chores and attending my daughters college Graduation! Congratulations to Danica! Way to go!

During the initial bench work construction for the peninsula, my wife came downstairs with her laptop connected to Skype. She was having a video telecon with her mom and dad. They wanted to see what I was doing. It was hard to explain what it was going to be, so I said, "just imagine a wet bar." Hence the new nickname for the Yuba Dam peninsula for the layout.

Here are two photos showing the construction progress so far.

This is view that you get as you come down the stairs and look toward the layout to your left front.
The hardboard strips on the floor will be the fascia trim pieces.
I haven't decided what color to paint the wet bar.

The sky board will take several coats of spackle to blend the edges into the wall.  The sky board is glued to the sheet rock and has two rows of screws on each end, one into studs and one into sheet rock anchors. The middle is not screwed. I am hoping this construction will allow the center to "float" and thus not crack at the edges as it expands with temperature and humidity changes. I am using Red Devil One Time lightweight spackling. This dries fast and remains somewhat flexible over time.

This closer view shows the benchwork for Burnside Wharf, the coved harboard skyboard and the planned
water surface for the Yuba Dam.

The wet bar creates a neat appearance and opens up a vast storage area under the layout. That made Alicia very happy.  I elected not to put legs under the Burnside Wharf area as I prefered the more open look.

Once the sky board is done with spackling, the whole back wall will be painted with the Potomac River scene.

While the spackle was drying, I added some base scenery in the Clairborne Creek area. I'm trying to get some finished scenes while construction continues elsewhere.