Kato Broadcast Building Modifications

Finally got around to mutilating one of those wonderful new modern buildings Kato came out with last year.  The first victim of my three from this run from Kato was what they call the "Broadcast Building", item 23-436.   Although apparently in Japan its referred to as the "Sumitomo Mitsui Bank", which I like better.

I wanted to customize the building, but didn't feel like doing a standard 'double up' just to make it taller.  My impression of it is that its a decent looking modern building, but lacked windows.

Therefore, I decided to cut a big hole and add windows.

And here's the hole:

And here's the finished product....yes, apologies, I skipped some steps in the process.  Here's what I did:

• Disasembled
• Painted - exterior with a new beige/tan color, and interior with a thick undercoat of black (to stop light leakage) and then a coat of light grey
• Painted three different tones of greys to the 7 floors.
• Added furniture and details to 5 of the 7 floors (using some of my Luetke Modelbahn furnishings and some homemade cubicles)
• Added LED strips --- these are much easier to use than soldering/wiring individual LED's, although they came with a rubbery 'waterproof' cover that I couldn't remove.  It was strange, but ultimately had no effect.
• Added extra signs and LED's for the exterior advertising signs.  Mostly using the method explained in this link.
• Created a new ground floor -- the ground floors that come with Kato's buildings are terrific, unfortunately, their sidewalk doesn't integrate well with any other manufacturers sidewalk, so I had to sacrifice it.
• Put it together! 

So here are some photos of the interior details and the corporate plastic people forced to work into the late hours....

From the outside, you can pity the sad, alienated corporate stooges sitting in their depressing cubes.

And here's a view from a ways back set into its natural setting:

Now I need to find some more buildings to cut up and some more plastic people to force to work! Har!