Bricks And Figures: April 2017

My New improved Cafe Corner.

If you didn't know already, I have slowly been converting my Hsanhe branded mini modular building sets into full fledged modular buildings. Of the original six building sets, I converted the Seven-Eleven convenience store, the KFC fast food restaurant, the Starbucks coffee shop and the Apple store.

Hsanhe Sweet Shop

I then set my sights on what to do with the Hsanhe Sweet Shop, pictured above. I was originally thinking about just expanding the footprint by doubling the space, so I bought another Hsanhe Sweet Shop set with that plan in mind. But the more I mulled it over, it just wasn't challenging enough because I had already executed this idea with the Seven Eleven store.

Also, the idea of adding a pink building into my Its-Not-Lego town (the Hsanhe Sweet shop is made up of mostly pink and flesh coloured bricks) didn't seem that appealing to me.

Cafe Corner before mods.

So instead of adding another new building to the town, I started to examine each of the existing modular buildings that already existed. The first floor of the Lepin Cafe Corner seemed like a very good candidate. It was sitting empty and had enough floor space to accommodate the Sweet Shop expansion.

I didn't want to change the structure or layout of the Cafe Corner , so any changes I made would have to fit within the pre-existing space. I started off by making a list of what I wanted to accomplish by merging the Hsanhe Sweet shop with the Lepin Cafe Corner. Here's the list:

1. Replace the existing black window frames with white ones

2. Retain existing brick facade

3. Remove the angular front door

4. Move store entrance to the side of the building

5. Retain the little tables and umbrellas

6. Retain the decorative element

7. Retain the awnings

8. Add a back door

9. Retain the colour pallet of the Sweet Shop

Ok, so with that in mind, let's look at the improvements, starting with the exterior. I was able to brighten the exterior of the Cafe Corner by replacing the first row of dark blue bricks with yellow ones. Then I removed all the black window frames and replaced the with white ones.

Bake shop entrance.

You can see that I managed to keep the awnings and small tables. The small tables were already yellow so fit into the exterior colour scheme nicely. I chose the yellow colour because I think having a pink exterior for the Sweet Shop would have been too much of an eyesore. Luckily Its Not Lego town has city ordinances to prohibit gaudy colours on building exteriors.

The Lepin Cafe Corner initially had a swinging door on the side of the building, so I simply made it the new main entrance to the Sweet Shop.

Sheng Yuan Candy Shop.

Perhaps the most challenging aspect of the Cafe Corner modification was what to do with the corner where the front door used to be. I tore out the door and the front steps and kind of left it empty being at a loss for what to do.

Then it occurred to me, that I had just recently completed building the Sheng Yuan Friends little shops. One of the shops had a rotating display. I could put this in the corner space and put a curved window in front of it. But then I discovered I needed more rows of bricks below and above the curved window. So that meant coming up with some curved bricks.

Winner Brand Ice Cream Shop.

This Winner Ice Cream shop set was sacrificed because it had all the parts I needed to complete the Cafe Corner mods. It had the curved bricks and even a curved window with printed designs on it. As a bonus I would take the door also because of the printed OPEN sign on it. The bricks were more orange than yellow, but this is as good as it was going to get.

I thought I could use the curved white roof pieces from the Winner building, but I couldn't make them fit into the existing Cafe Corner facade without redesigning both of the awnings.

It turned out that the inside of the Winner Ice Cream shop had just the right piece I needed in the way of the blue curved countertop. It fit nicely over the curved window. My only gripe is that the colour is blue. If it had been white, yellow or even pink, it might have integrated better into the Cafe Corner facade. Oh well, beggars can't be choosers.

A closer look at all the newly added elements. It's still a bit kludgy looking but I'll try to refine it a bit more in the future.

I was still able to keep the decorative element above where the front door used to be and changed the mug to a cupcake.

Please feel free to try some of our free samples!

Ok, now that we have had a look at the outside of the new and improved Cafe Corner, let's move indoors shall we?

So here's the layout. As you enter the store, there is a huge U shaped setup along the back of the shop displaying all of the sweets for sale. All of these display cases come from the two Hsanhe Sweet Shop sets. I forget where all the buns came from, but I did use one of the brown crates leftover from my Lepin Market Street building mod.

On the other side is another wall of baked items, including a display case for pies and cakes, and next to that a cash register. You can see the little upright oven next to the rotating sweets display.

Against the window is the prep area. There's a small sink and mixer and bowl. Also a pan to make crepes. Against the wall, we got a shelf for tall glasses and mugs if you want a milkshake. Today's special milkshake flavour is banana.

As I mentioned earlier, I didn't want the whole Sweet shop establishment to be coloured pink, but I did want to preserve the some of it's history, so I put in a pink wall with the Sweet shop logo. In that wall, there is a passageway that goes underneath the stair case which was unused space in the original Lepin Corner Cafe. It can now be used to store stuff.