I’ve been inspired by others on these boards to revitalize my Kenner Firehouse and Ecto-1. I’ve begun work on my Ecto, check it out on the Ectomobiles section. My firehouse will be a little later in getting started, but I wanted to go ahead and start my thread and add my ‘before’ pictures.
General Overview:
This was my own firehouse that I played with when I was a kid. I took good care of it, as my Ghostbusters toys were my favorites. It even survived part of our ceiling almost collapsing on it during a big storm with a leaky roof (thanks for saving it, Dad!)
It was in storage for about 15 years, until I dug it out at my parents’ house last month. I dismantled the whole thing and cleaned all the pieces, then put it back together to take these pictures. You might notice that the screws and braces that hold it together aren’t in the pictures, but I do have them in a bag ready to put in the finished product.
It’s in pretty good shape, although there is some damage to the garage doors. The right door has part of the hinge broken off, and the insides of them is being eaten away by something (mold? mildew? no idea), thus the white areas. The grate in the roof where the ectoplasm goes through also has the white menace on it, but not as bad.
My build will resemble some you’ve seen before, but will hopefully be a bit different and offer something else to the community. I’m not doing this to compete with some great re-builds, only to be happy with my old toy and be able to enjoy working on it.
Your input and criticisms are welcome, though don’t expect me to care if you don’t like it. It’s mine, and as long as I’m happy with the results, that’s all that I really care about here.
Thanks for checking this out, and keep an eye out for updates in the weeks to come.
Wow, that thing is in great condition! I have not seen one of those in person since I was about 10 years old or so…
It is so awesome when stuff from your childhood lasts the test of time and can be brought back to relive some glory moments in the future… and since you will be working on it thats showing it some love also…
Your firehouse is in nice shape. If that white stuff is mold or mildew, I’d try some bleach to get rid of it. A small amount on a cotton swab, then rinse it off good.
If that doesn’t do it, go to the local drug store and get one of those 3-in-1 nail buffers that do the natural shine thing to nails. It has a fine grit section to shape, an ultra fine grit to smooth and a micro fine grit to polish. It also works real well on plastic .
Thanks for the complements and tips. I wish I could just get some new doors, but I know those aren’t easy to find, especially in good shape.
My wife and son are going on a road trip with the inlaws this weekend, so when I’m not at work I’ll have plenty of time to work on this. My wife will probably take the camera with her, but I’ll take some pictures when they get back and try to have them up by Tuesday or Wednesday.
I’ve almost finished the exterior of my firehouse. I still need to paint the drainage pipe on the back corner of the building, and I want to paint the roof a different color, but other than that, I’m done.
Just a little slate gray, brick red, and black will do wonders.
I tried to mimic the way the windows on the side of the building look to match the real Hook and Ladder 8, with the columns of gray from top to bottom. I’m happy with how that turned out.
The Ghostbusters sign is still in the Kenner location. I’m not sure if I’ll move it over to the center later or not. I painted the base and edge of the sign black, which makes it look a bit snazzier. Those are the original Kenner decals on the sign. Those may be replaced with ones with either a white or black background. But for now, it will do the trick.
I painted the doors black (obviously), and I decided not to paint the base of the building at all. If you look at H&L8, the base gray and the rest of the gray on the building are different shades. So since that piece was already gray, I just left it that way to complement the slate gray I painted on.
Next up, the interior. I’ve got some plans for the interior, but I’ll save those as a surprise. I couldn’t find my bronze paint (I know it’s around here somewhere), so I mixed up some of the colors I had out and came up with a rusty color that I painted on the rails on the upper floors. It’s interesting, but I’m not sure if I like it yet or not. That may be changed down the line (especially if Mr. Bronze Paint shows up).
So overall I’m very happy with how this is turning out. I’ll try to have some updates by the middle of next week. Life goes on and this is just a spare time thing a few hours a week. Thanks again for looking!
I decided that instead of painting the interior of my firehouse, I’d rather just wallpaper it. I made a wallpaper in MS Paint and printed it out, then taped it to a file folder and cut it to size to fit around the braces for the second floor and the bay doors. The wallpaper is intended to resemble the engine bay in the movie. Here’s what the results look like:
(Also notice I painted the corner post avocado green to go with the wall color. This was also inspired by the movie.)
I’ve still got to repaint the railings and work on the top 2 floors.
EDIT: The picture of the railings above stopped working, so I reloaded it and here it is. I plan to change this paint color that I experimented with.
I also painted the drain pipe on the back corner of the exterior, but I forgot to get a picture of it when I took these other ones.
Love how you printed out the actual wall layout in the movies! Awsome idea my friend. All in all this is a pretty amazing firehouse makeover. Impressed I am.
Here’s a picture of the painted drain pipe. Hey wait…why is there glare in the window holes?
It’s because I installed windows! Well, close enough to windows. I cut up some plastic baseball card sleeves and taped them to the inside of the walls. It looks pretty good from the outside. The inside looks trashy, but it’ll be covered up when I get around to wallpapering the top 2 floors.
I also painted the roof, finally. I’m not going to lock it back down on the rest of the building until I finish the interior walls, but it looks pretty good just sitting on top of those pegs.
Also it’s kind of hard to tell from these pictures, but I painted the 2nd floor supports white so they blend in better with my 1st floor wallpaper.
I’m currently working on the upper floor walls/window areas. I’m thinking of adding some fun stuff to the walls between the windows, but there’s not a lot of room, so I’ll have to squeeze it in and be creative, I guess. I’ve got to re-install the pole, and I’m going to replace the GB logo on the sign, but I’m leaving it off to the side instead of moving it to the center.
I’ve given thought to building a little pool table or bed for the top floor, but that’d be a lot of work I’m not real interested in doing. I think too much clutter would over-do it. I have to find that just right amount of clutter, whatever that is.
It’s hard considering there’s really not room for a desk for Janine or even the basement containment unit area. I might make a couple of 2D lockers and add those to the engine bay wall. Dunno.
I’ve got a bit more I can do with the Ecto-1, but it’s almost done too.
Here you can see that I replaced the logo in the sign with one that was a bit bigger and has a white background. I’ve decided to keep it off to the left where it is. I also re-installed the swivel pole, but wrapped it in gold wrapping paper. I thought of using a dowel, but this way I didn’t have to cut and fit anything, and we already had the paper.
I wallpapered the upper two floors also. They are designed to look like the firehouse interior from the movie, with white tile on the bottom, a gray/off white color at the top, and wood trim around the windows. Those windows were tricky to fit right.
On the side wall I made some framed newspapers and magazines from the movie montage.
Small update. I painted the railings black, after not liking the crappy look of the rusty rails I did earlier. I like the cleaner look. I also found a random picture of a rug on yahoo search, resized it and printed it out, and popped it down on the pegs on the upper floor to cover up the grate. I’d like to cover up the gaping hole in the floor by the wall, too, but not sure if I’ll put a rug over it or find a small piece of furniture to hide it.
For the most part, I’m done with the firehouse now. I’ll add things as I randomly find or think of them, but this will be about it. With that being said, he’s the old guys in their new home:
