Workbench Update: Madness I Tell You!

What started as a passing idea at a dollar store has gotten completely out of hand. Grunberg's Asylum has turned out far nicer (and bigger) than I had originally planned. I figured before spraying this monstrosity I would take a few photos for those of you interested in the scratch-building aspect of the hobby.

Since my rough mock-up in the last post I made some fairly substantial additions to the asylum. Here it is from the front.


Here's a close-up of the door. Steps are made from cork tiles and the large pillars are obviously from the cake-decorating aisle. The ornate windows on the doors were made from some of the hardware that I pulled off of the wooden boxes. So for three dollars I got the main structure as well as some fancy doodads.


The back door. I assume that there's a kitchen in this wing. Even lunatics have to eat I suppose, and it's awful difficult to prepare gruel without a stove. The chimney is a bit from the GW tower set. The end was too short to fit, so I sawed off a piece of a round pencil to extend it.


The good doctor keeps his private apartments on the top floor. At the last minute I decided to toss a balcony on the back. I imagine that Dr. Grunberg reclines here on warm evenings with a week-old newspaper in one hand and a cup of chamomile tea in the other. Treating madmen must be taxing on the nerves.

Side profile.


A partially-painted Crazy Nell shown on the front steps for scale. As if she would ever be let out of the basement.


I thought I might try and make some quick and dirty walls to keep the crazies from escaping. I'm going to try and make a few lengths of "stone" wall out of some styrofoam I have lying around.


When I think about mental health institutions from this period, I often think of the sprawling back garden where patients roam during the day. I'm pondering making a few different stone or concrete planters like this one. The bench was inspired by the scene in Bram Stoker's Dracula where Mina Harker and Ms. Lucy sit in the garden and talk about their man problems.


Anyway, this more or less documents my productivity from this past weekend. Although I never took a photo, I also finished building and priming the third and final sarcophagus for the Old Graveyard. I'm hoping to do a photo shoot later this week. Stay tuned, and as always...

Thanks for reading,
JET