BrickLinking Café Corner and Fire Brigade

[BrickJonas]

Hey fellow AFOLs!

Last week, one of my dreams finally came true — I managed to collect the necessary pieces for two old modular buildings that were missing from my collection: the Café Corner and the Fire Brigade. I was sorting my loose bricks during the summer and realized I had many 1×2, 1×4, 1×6, and 1×8 bricks in various colors that I hadn’t really used over the last couple of years in my builds, so I started playing around with the idea of checking how many of the necessary bricks I already had for these two classic LEGO sets. After a quick check, I found I already had around 30% of the parts, so I thought it would be a good idea to order the remaining bricks and finally build these beauties.

Café Corner

This set is from 2007, and it contains some bricks that I knew I’d need to substitute:

• There’s an old 1 × 4 × 5 gray door on the side of the building which is just too expensive for me, so I used a newer 1 × 4 × 6 light bluish gray door instead.
• This meant I had to redesign that section of the building a bit, but it’s not a big deal for me.
• In contrast, I didn’t replace the famous front door of the café, because I really liked it and managed to find it for under 10 euros — which, in my opinion, was an acceptable price for a rare, discontinued part in new condition.
• There’s a nice decoration above the door made out of ski pieces. There’s a new mold variant of these pieces that is significantly cheaper than the old one, so I decided to use the newer ones.
• The designers used a beautiful 1 × 8 × 2 dark blue arch piece above the side door. Since I believe there’s a chance LEGO will re-release that piece in future sets (it’s a common part, and I don’t see why they wouldn’t use it again), I just used a dark bluish gray one for now and I'll change it in the future. It doesn’t spoil the overall look, and I had plenty of those lying around.
• To my surprise, the 2 × 2 light bluish gray turntable pieces used for building the 45-degree walls are also pretty pricey, but they can be substituted with 2 × 2 jumpers, so I changed those too.
• Of course, I replaced the old white wall pieces with real 1 × 2 × 3 windows, and also the big 2 × 4 × 3 windows with the new type.
• The parrots that decorate the tower come in two different mold variants, so I just used the cheaper one (I believe it’s the new one).
• The designers used 1 × 2 + 1 × 1 tiles because 1 × 3 tiles didn’t exist back in 2007, so I replaced those with 1×3s in some places.

Overall, I’m very satisfied with the result! Anyone familiar with modular buildings can tell this is the Café Corner, and these small piece substitutions are noticeable only after a detailed inspection.

 

Fire Brigade

This set is a bit newer, so I didn’t need to modify much of it:

• The designers used a big 8 × 16 tile as the base of the garage, but I had plenty of 2 × 2 and 2 × 4 tiles in my collection, so I just used those instead to save a bit of money.
• The back doors aren’t produced anymore and are hard to find, so I just designed and built my own doors — I think the outcome is pretty solid!
• The fireman’s pole was yellow in the original set, but I found silver ones on the online Pick a Brick website, so I ordered those instead.This way it was cheaper, and it also looks better!
• And the red garage doors... well, I almost gave up when I saw that those pieces are around 6-8 euros each on BrickLink, but luckily I noticed they were reintroduced in the City Tower set earlier this year, so I just had to wait around 3-4 months to get them from PAB! I was very impatient, but it was worth the wait. ;)

 

Verdict

For modular building collectors, I believe this is a fantastic way of building these old sets, since they’re very expensive if one wants to buy them sealed. I paid around 440 euros (including postage) for the two sets, using all new pieces except for the gold dish on the bell and the three special grille pieces — but fortunately, I managed to get those in very good condition.

Now, let’s see all three of my BrickLinked modular buildings together — they’re beautiful and I still can't believe I finally own them! :)

I displayed all of my modular buildings and the beautiful Creator Expert carousel on a local LEGO exhibition last week, the visitors really liked the layout! I'm planning to motorize the carousel and add some trains to the layout next year! ;)