The windows and doors in the Sam & Max roombox will need to be placed in the holes before the false walls are glued in. For this reason I needed to stucco and paint the false walls outside of the roombox. (Normally I like to assemble first, then decorate.)

I was concerned about the center wall not having a lot of support behind it, especially around the windows, so I added spacers around the window holes.

These will stabilize the wall and will also enable me to glue the windows to the false wall before I glue in the wall, which I think will work better than trying to glue them in the exact right position on the outer wall (potentially smearing glue all over the graphics in the process).

The bottom portion of the wall will be covered by wainscot that I’ll make out of 3″ basswood. I drew a pencil line over the top edge so I’d know how far down the wall to stucco.

I taped off where the wainscot will start and also the top 1/4″ of the wall, where the molding will go.

The stucco is watered down wood filler, spread and textured with a sponge brush. You can read more about this technique here and here.

Once the whole wall was stuccoed, I covered the windows with tape to protect the stained wood and inserted them in the holes.

Then I added more stucco around the window edges to fill in the gaps.

I let that dry for about 15 minutes, then popped the windows out while the stucco was still wet and let them dry overnight. The area around the windows looks much better than it did pre-stucco!

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The next step in the Freelance Police roombox is to prepare the walls that will get covered up by the false walls. I used a fan-made program named Telltale Explorer to extract the texture that displays outside the office windows in Telltale’s games.

I started by printing it in black and white, to see how it fit. It’s not wide enough to span the whole back wall, so I had to repeat the image. It’s also not tall enough, so I clipped a sky section out of another texture to go at the top.

When the windows are in place, it all blends together.

I printed out the graphic on photo paper, sprayed it with UV-resistant matte sealer, and left it to dry for 24 hours. The paper is glossy, but the spray is matte so that took the gloss away.

Next I painted the areas behind the doors and the rat hole. Outside the office door, I used a shade of gray similar to the office window in Telltale’s version of the game. Initially I painted the closet area black, but after looking at the closet in the game I realized it should be the same color as the wall.

I also realized the brick red I used for the base looks nothing like the brick paper I bought for the back of the roombox, which is more orangey. So I repainted the base and the closet wall area with a Behr paint sample called Harvest Brown, which I’m also planning to use for the walls (pictures are farther down in the post).

Next I stained the windows and closet door.

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