If you're looking for a quiet place to hide out, you could do worse than the Roche Motel. Of course the floors are a bit sticky... I recently picked up a couple of Plasticville Motels on ebay because I had a project in mind. It actually took some time, and the walls and sign were made long before I had the buildings themselves. The buildings themselves are wonderful pieces: The fit is good, all the doors open, and they are attractive buildings. The walls and rioof have interesting texture, and they really capture the 'look' of early Motels. The first kit had white walls and salmon trim, and arrived glued together. Sometimes the old glue has detached and the kit comes apart easily (because the owner used the wrong glue) This was not the case here. I spent hours carefully cutting the roof from the building. Once it was free, I added a floor and interior walls. I removed the doors and front & side windows, and painted them an aqua blue. The body of the building I sprayed flat white. The roof and front walk I painted grey. The second building arrived with salmon walls and white trim, but at least it was unassembled. I assembled and painted it the same way as I did the first. The front walls and sign support are cut from a section of white plastic grille intended to cover flourescent lights. They were cut to size, and then sanded until smooth. (NB: Be very careful when doing a lot of plastic sanding. You do not want to inhale the dust, and you don't want the kids or pets to do so either) The front walls are glued to sidewalk sections cut from sintra. They are styrene, and glue easily to the sintra with cyano adhesive.

The sign support was glued to a base combining a sidewalk and a decorative patch of greenery. The greenery is plucked from an artificial plant purchased at Michael's Crafts. The sign is printed on my computer, and glued to a plastic body. I also added a small 'Now Rat Free' sign to encourage customers. There is also a 'No Vacancy' section on the sigh, with the usual 'invisible' No. The Motel is laid out as you see here. It takes up a fair amount of space on the table, but gives you an area with clear fields of fire. The buildings are low enough that you can easily climb on top for a bit of elevation. Please ignore the different colours of the doors on the buildings: The pictures were taken with two different cameras, one of which used a flash until I could figure out how to turn it off. These two pictures are the same building taken with the same camera. The picture at the top of this column has the correct colours. The Plasticville Motel kit is still in production.