droomangroup

totally fantastic, some amazing details. I don't think it's too big at all, loaders can be HUGE!

got mine! thx a bunch!

I've never even been to Amsterdam, but even I can recognize this as Amsterdam architecture. love the use of plates, love the interior, very well done.

thanks, although the interior colors and furniture i can't take much credit on, i pretty much just used what was in the original set along with a few mods to make them fit a smaller space. thx :)

here's my contribution, yet another Simpson's House... http://www.eurobricks.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=119504 -drew

Thanks guys!

ha, thanks, yeah there's no secret hiding places for Bart or Hugo :)

ha, thanks. I feel like most of that credit should go to the original set, but it was certainly a challenge to fit it all in. thanks

great build, love the tree itself. think i need to challenge myself with a large tree build.

Sharing with kids is definitely a challenge, luckily i only have one girl and now she's 11 and getting a little (very little) more patient. I started out by sorting by color and a few types, like this... "Smooth Bricks" are tiles, I did that set up before I found the wonderful world of Bricklink and learned the standard taxonomy of LEGO parts. i would say the big advantage to that set up is that sorting by color and a few types is very easy and pretty fast so clean up and resorting isn't too painful. I think it's a really good method for smaller (not huge) collections and since sorting isn't as painful it's not too bad to keep up with and it not hard for the kids to do. what surprised me was that as soon as i did this, my daughters builds got more complex and elaborate since she wasn't spending so much time looking for parts (and she would complete bigger builds instead of giving up halfway). Along with an unsorted bin for quick clean up, i'd suggest doing what i did in my current set up where i have a few bins for work in progress projects, or for you case, maybe just make WIP bins for each kid? If I were to do a color/type hybrid sort again, I would at least break up plates and bricks to make finding parts easier. So I'd have "Red Bricks" then "Red Plates" etc. I would also do a type bin for modified plates, since they always seemed to be hard to find in a color bin. Once we built out a Lego room I went for a mostly pure type sort, I found the disadvantage to the color sort was that I was designing builds in LDD for some photo projects and it was easier for me to just buy all new bricks for them because I didn't have a quick way to find all the part I needed for my builds. Now that it's type sorted, when I need to order bricks for a build I designed in LDD it's easy for me to inventory what I have. That said, if you're not using LDD, then this might not be a big problem for you. The disadvantage to a type sort (when kids are in the mix) is that it's really hard to get them to help sorting. I've pretty much resigned myself to doing all the sorting. My current set up looks like this... you can see more details in my room thread here... http://www.eurobricks.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=107992 anyway, that's my 2 cents, I hope it helps.

Hey all, Just wanted to share my attempt at a Simpson's House modular. After butchering my original Simpson's house for parts for some microscale Simpsons's modulars I made, I decided to rebuild the house with the leftover parts (along with some PAB cups of tan bricks). Aside from the tan bricks from PAB the only bricklinking I had to do was for some more brown/flesh doors, thankfully tons of sellers parted these out, so it wasn't hard to find. I used mission style San Francisco row houses as my inspiration and overall I'm pretty happy with how it came out. I know this is based off a licensed theme, but I figured you guys appreciate modulars more :) Enjoy... First Floor... Second Floor... Third Floor...

Good points, a new stretcher would be cool. I get that the ladder truck is more easily identifiable, but I think a few basic alternative vehicles wouldn't be too far out of the realm of possibility, could make for good small sets. I thought the 60061 Airport Fire Truck was a pretty bold move for a different style fire truck, no ladder on that one :)

Thanks, the red is call "Stop Sign" and the grey is called "Seal Gray" they are both from the True Value paint colors (I live in a small town with no big box stores) thx! it stays fairly clean, although not as clean as my OCD would like :) sharing it with an 11yo can be challenging, but she knows the deal. One thing I've done to help with messes is I've added bins in the closet for projects, so when a project is stalled we can dump all related parts in a project bin and clean up our work space a bit. here's what it looks like right now... hahaha, well, yeah that's a challenge. Time to open them up and build :) Nah, not really, but it's actually pretty basic as far as materials. It's just the trofast bins, a few sheets of black melamine and some 2x4's. Although the melamine is showing signs of dulling from the bricks scratching them, so I may make the effort in the future to replace them with something tougher like formica. Still, it looks ok, and works great. thanks :) speaking of sorting, I did re-sort some bins as some bins were getting crowded. I made room by adding some large bins in the closet and the new layout seems to be working. Here's my master doc showing the bin labels... I'd look on Etsy or Ebay. Trust me, I know the feeling. The problem with LEGO is it's never enough :) very nice! followed :)

I think there is a difference between specialized/prefab pieces like hulls, cockpits, motorcycles, etc, and just obvious cost reducers like 6x6 panels. To me, the later is the bigger problem since it really does rob kids of the ability to build other things. I got the yellow castle set when I was like 6yo and for a long time after that I built a LOT of yellow things because of it. I also experienced the birth of the grey castle sets and the castle walls they came with. Even as a 9yo I felt cheated and hated those wall pieces. That said, I think some older folks might argue that all the new parts like cheese slopes, brackets, modified bricks, etc are diluting the experience as well (I don't agree, but I've heard people say it...they weren't AFOLs). However, despite the big panels and rocks in cheaper sets, I think the nice thing about LEGO now is that the builds are a lot more complex than they used to be and show kids things that are way more advanced than the 4-wide cars and super simple buildings of my childhood. I think the biggest draw of LEGO to me as an adult is that it's creative problem solving and the parts today and the sets available (even if they aren't cheap) totally foster some awesome creative problem solving by doing some pretty great SNOT stuff and using parts in all kinds of ways (like Bart's hot dog lamp).

ha, thanks. i go back and forth on the decals. i like them but it feels a bit like cheating. i may go back and replace the parts that aren't text with lego versions, like the burger, shake, and fries and the coke signs. thanks guys :) It's pretty cool, I've even had Milt's daughter and one of his grandsons contact me about it. The grandson wanted to buy it, but it's a bit out of his price range :)

wow i won too, it's a Festivus Miracle :) thanks CopMike, PM sent!

thanks! yeah the real building is packed with little details so it was fun to pack it all in. It's funny because despite all that's going on, I think my favorite part was using the syringe for the shake blender :)

nice!

oh yeah i've shown them and they love it. the owner has been out on vacation so he's yet to see it in person, but i think a few employees have already sent him pics.

I've been pondering this build for a while as Milt's is the oldest restaurant in Moab and a landmark everyone knows and loves. I got inspired to build it to help draw in people to my booth at a local xmas craft fair where i was selling my Brickrock Moab calendar which features custom Lego Jeeps out on the trails of Moab... http://imgur.com/a/vJTuE For reference here's some pics of the real Milt's... https://www.google.com/search?q=milts+stop+and+eat&tbm=isch some of the signage has changed this year so some pics look different, plus someone just painted the cinderblock wall outside with these large cinder block sized color blocks to make an abstract mural, which is lucky for me since it's perfect for lego. I'm usually not a fan of making decals for Lego builds, but for this one I made an exception since I was rushing to build this for the fair, and i have a limited selection of that light blue color so making some pure lego signs would have been difficult with the bricks on hand. The only other "cheats" i used was on the yellow bike rack where i cut a yellow bar in half to make the center slats and you can see inside pics i used a few custom printed "Coke" 1x1 round bricks for soda cups. The signage is close to the real thing, but i made some changes. the font face wasn't exactly right on the "Shakes, Fries, etc" and since my vinyl cutter can't cut super small things i changed the round coke signs on their building from saying "Coka-Cola" to just the bottle siloutte. Also the large sign on the top is actually a variation of their old sign, i tried cutting their current sign with the awesome mascot guy, but it was just too small for my cutter. One of the nice moves i like here was the outside tables, the real tables are super small light tables and i wanted to get the same feeling while maintaining a studless look. this technic's wheel and a 3m axle worked perfectly. here you can see the back wall by the bathrooms, the crazy wall on the left is actually what it looks like now (if you've been to milts before) they just repainted it a few weeks ago with this crazy abstract mosaic pattern...perfect for lego. some nice moves i like here are the electric meter on the left wall and the gas meter on the back wall. the black thing is their smoker (which i just realized is turned the wrong way for the photo shoot...woops). I kept the outside eating area pretty simple since i built this in a bit of a rush, the only comment i heard a lot at the craft fair was about how i didn't include the massive tree in that area. Honestly it would have taken me as long to build that tree as it did the entire building and i'm pretty sure i don't have the right bricks for it. I may still give it a go as i need to learn the art of tree building in LEGO. I was happy that at least one person understood the green plates were a hint at the tree's root area. my favorite move out here is the little mural on the storage box outside the building. it's simple, but i like how it kept true to the real building. here's a detail of the outside condiments and water cooler table, my other favorite move here is the newspaper machine, it's simple, but it looks good. i should have prefaced this by saying i eat at Milt's a -lot-. it's walking distance from my house and it's the best burger (and tacos) in town so i'm there nearly every day. so i built almost the whole interior from memory :) i'll start with the counter details here. i like the modified plates as menu/ketchup holders and the 1x1 white round bricks are the paper town rolls they have. the little plastic food plates were i think from some of my daughter's "Friends" sets or something, but they fit great as fast food diner plastic baskets. I only wish they included a stud to hold the food. in order to stay on one standard plate the building is a bit shorter in scale so i had to make do with a few less stools as the real thing, but it still works. you may notice the server is a bit taller than the other figs, that's because he has a 1x1 plate lift on his shoes b/c he's modeled after a guy who works there, Jim, who's a tall guy :) the rear shake making area was a fun challenge, in order to keep the walkway the right size i had to make that small table/counter only 1 stud wide so i had to make the shake machine with some SNOT work so that i relied on the wall and could therefore be slimmer. my favorite move here was using the handle end of a grey Lego syringe as the blender part on the shake machine. it's a perfect look. here you can see the funky heater in the corner and even the stereo speaker on the wall. i used some light slate blue bricks on the inside, but the real color is actually like a light seafoam green. I have a few bricks that color, but like very few, and they are odd bricks too. i may go back and find some more to redo the interior colors. here's the back room, which in real life is super small, but here maybe more so, so it's pretty simplified. you can see the storage shelf and radio in the foreground and in the back ground is a fig making some fresh cut french fries on a potato cutter. the tiny bathroom with some maps and random pic tiles. in reality the walls are covered with moab area maps, so i tried to hint at that. on more of the counter area, note the tip jar and coffee machine. i didn't have the little black fang for a coffee pot handle so used some cut Lego tubing. here's a more overhead shot of the counter area. the stool color seats aren't accurate (since i had a limited number of 2x2 round tiles) and i also added a checked floor tile pattern mostly because the floor is just boring old white in real life and i was super low on 2x2 white tiles. one of my favorite moves here is behind the cook. there's a small counter there in real life that holds the warmer for their excellent chili, since i didn't have a lot of room, i used two downward facing 1x1 headlight bricks attached to a side stud brick on the wall (that holds the printed menu tile on the outside) one last shot of the outside, several locals at the fair joked about how the line was too short...which is a pretty fair criticism.

I'm just glad someone got it :)

How about Festivus for the rest of us?

Yeah love the front fenders and how the wedge plates look like vents on the side. Is the license plate your own sticker? or is that from something? -drew

Thanks :) I actually live in Moab, and it's pretty great. Thanks guys, It's hard to deny, it's a great place to live. nice! I like both those designs, I may have to steal that grey one for my willys jeep. Here's how mine breaks down, what nice is that by using corner plates I can move the mounting position around depending on where I need it. since it's not always practical to have it just mounted by a 2x2 plate on the bottom... thank again all!

thanks guys :)