How I Make the Raised Baseplates for my Modular Buildings

 

Hey brick fans!  

Some of you have asked me about the raised baseplates I'm using for my modular buildings, so this blog post will be a small tutorial and  closer look at how they are constructed.  Hopefully it will inspire you and give you some ideas for your own modular buildings.

It's still a work in progress, but I'm slowly migrating my modular building collection from classic baseplates to raised baseplates.  Classic baseplates have a tendency to warp over time and tend to flex when lifted. Raised baseplates give my buildings a cleaner and consistent appearance in addition to providing more structural integrity underneath.  

Just to be clear, my raised baseplates are not MILS plates, since mine have no connection points that allow the modular buildings to be connected to other plates such as roadways or other buildings.  Here's an example of what MILS plates look like: https://www.brickaddict.net/road-plates.  I don't need to have all my buildings attached to each other, because I like to rearrange them all the time for picture taking.

Today, we will look at how I make a raised baseplate for a 16x32 stud modular building, but the technique is the same if you have 32 stud wide modular buildings.  

Essentially we are making a sandwich structure with some blocks placed in between two sets of plates.  On the front of structure we place some SNOT bricks / technic stud bricks to which we will attach a fascia plate.

More on SNOT bricks here: https://bricknerd.com/home/snot-basics-geometry-techniques-and-pitfalls-3-18-2021

Here are all the parts you will need.   First we start off with a classic baseplate (that's the thinner single sided ones.

We then place some bricks on the classic baseplate.  It doesn't really matter the type of bricks that you use as long as you can attach them to the classic baseplate and then attach the regular plates on top.  For our example today, I'm using two pieces of 16x16 plates to place over the bricks, but you could use whatever you have on hand.  

You can use whatever technic bricks you have on hand, this is an example of 3 types of bricks you could use.  The 1x2 brick above will give you the greatest clutch power for attaching the front fascia. For most of my builds, the 1x1 brick with hole and blue pin is my preferred choice.

Here is example one.

Here is example two.

And here's example three. As I have said earlier, it's up to you to use whatever you have on hand and see which method works best for you.

Place the remaining plates on top.

These are the pieces we will use for the front fascia, 1 piece of 2x16 plate and 8 pieces of 2x2 tiles.  I've used dark gray for my fascia but you could use a different colour, just make sure that the plate and tiles are the same colour.

The completed fascia.

The raised baseplate with fascia attached.  It doesn't fit flush to the ground because of the lower baseplate and there's a bit of a riser where it meets your sidewalk.  I kind of like the setup though.

Now just finish off your sidewalk for your modular building.  It probably looks better if you have a contrasting sidewalk colour vs. fascia.  I'm using light gray tiles on my sidewalks so I use dark gray on the fascia.  But you can choose to make yours any colour you want.

There you go, that's how I make my raised baseplates with fascia for my modular buildings.  Hope you have found this information helpful and hoping to see how yours turns out.   Feel free to leave me a comment or question below.  Thanks for looking, bye!