Illuminating my first city building

In between making points, I've been playing with some of my recently acquired buildings. I decided to tackle a small one initially to get the feel for things. First step was to dismantle the building, something Kato have made fairly easy. I dug out some LED strip tape, which unfortunately had green LEDs. It was a simple enough job however to desolder them and solder on some tiny replacement white LEDs.

While at it, I put some blue LEDs into the end spot so that the stairwell would be a different colour. Then I drilled holes and made space for the lights and mounted a row for each floor. Some more holes at the back to run the wires down.

On the bottom floor I made a small circuit board to terminate the wires from each floor.  It's just two strips of self adhesive copper tape on some cardboard, but it works pretty well.

The tables on the ground floor were given a quick coat of paint and populated with some cheap ebay people.

Since not everyone works 24/7 in their office, I wanted some of the floors to be less lit up than others. On the top floor I made a light board just for the stairwell.

On other floors, I put a liberal coat of black paint over the LEDs to dim them.

Then I battled with my inkjet printer for about an hour to get it to print out some window blinds and a logo in decent quality on glossy paper. It's a pretty nasty wee printer! The signs and blinds were cut out and stuck on, and then I made some furniture for the floors. Desks and chairs were made out of foam core, partitions from paper, and some cheap ebay people added.

And the final result?

Although a bit hard to see, the store is a Mister Donut. There is a bit of a story there, as when I went to Japan in 2012, I quickly discovered Mister Donut and soon fell in love. Their donuts were tasty and cheap, and more importantly, very easy to order even when one didn't speak any Japanese! So it seemed only appropriate to have a Mister Donut in Utrainia.

I quite like the finished result, but I think some fine tuning of the lights will be required. Some of the lights are too bright, and some of the blue ones need toning down. I would also like to see if I can make the Mister Donut sign illuminated. However for a first attempt I think it works pretty well, and will be adding lighting to the rest of my buildings too now. The difference compared to the unlit building on the right is impressive!