Lepin 15002 Cafe Corner with full interior on every level (not Lego)

Hey what's up brick fans?  Hope you are all staying safe and healthy during this pandemic season.   Right now, the government strongly advises all of us to stay home and self-isolate. If there's a silver lining in all this, it's that I have lots of time to spend working on my modular buildings.

Thanks to COVID-19, I have now finally completed all of the modifications to my Lepin 15002 Cafe Corner modular.  If you're not familiar with this building, Lego designed this building to house a Cafe on the main floor, with the upper floors being occupied by a hotel, as evidenced by the large signage attached to the side of the building.  Well, that's what it was supposed to be, because this building was completely devoid of any interior finishings, so you had to just use your imagination about what it could be on the inside.  You can find my build and review posts,  part one and part two on my other blog Its-Not-Lego.blogspot.com.

Around the time I was building the Lepin Cafe Corner, I was also building the Hsanhe mini shops.  I had the idea to move one of the Hsanhe mini shops - the Sweet Shop, into the main floor.  Here's my build post of the Hsanhe Sweet Shop.  Since then, I've been gradually working towards furnishing the interior of the Cafe Corner, my version now renamed to the Sweet Shop and Hostel.

Change Log

• July 2016 - ordered the Lepin Cafe Corner and Hsanhe mini shops
• Sept 2016 - build Cafe Corner and Sweet shop
• Apr 2017 - disassemble Sweet shop and integrate into Cafe Corner main floor, redesign main floor exterior
• Jun 2017 - furnish second floor with hostel reception and lounge area, rebuild Hotel sign to read Hostel
• May 2019 - replace the 32x32 baseplate of the modular, furnish third floor
• Sept 2019 - third floor gets new bunk beds
• Oct 2019 - add floor tiles to all three floors
• Dec 2019 - revise main floor to include seating area
• Jan 2020 - revise third floor to include 3 piece bathroom
• Feb 2020 - replace all second and third floor windows

Exterior views

The most significant exterior enhancements include re-working the sidewalk area and changing the first floor facade.  The front door was relocated to the side and a circular glass display and signage added in it's place.  All the windows have been updated as well.  

One of the Sweet shop staff is giving out free samples to entice customers to come in and shop.  

Front Left Side View

Changed the Hotel sign to read Hostel.   Normally, there's a hotdog cart parked out front next to the Hostel entrance, but they took the day off apparently.

The famous Hostel sign.

Front Right Side View

The original green baseplate that came with the set was replaced with a brown one.  A covered service entrance provides an alternate access to the Sweet shop.

Rear Left Side view

Rear Right Side View

The second floor footprint is extended to provide an outdoor smoking area that leads back into the hostel lounge.  Trash cans on both first and second floor.

Service Entrance to Sweet Shop,  Second Floor Smoking Patio

Main Floor 

The main floor is now fully furnished with what used to be the Hsanhe Sweet shop.  The interior colour scheme is a nod to the original set, but everything else is pretty much new. That includes the workspace with oven, mixer, sink and drawers.  The circular display in the corner can be rotated to display different sweets.  A custom counter with cash register also houses more sweets.  The floor is fully tiled as well.

Prep Area, Rotating Display, Counter with Cash Register

There are even more baked goods next to the entrance.  The Sweet shop normally employs three to four staff who all take turns in cleaning, making, selling and marketing the wares.

Closer look at Prep Area and Rotating display

Even more baked goods are available next to the comfy seating area.  Each table gets overhead lighting.  Business is good.

Additional Shelves and in-Store Seating for 4 patrons

Second Floor

The hostel occupies the second and third floor of the modular building.  The second floor is fully furnished and tiled with the hostel reception area and lounge.  As you come up the stairs from the street, the reception area is on your left.  There is a water cooler and coffee machine for the customers enjoyment.  A brightly covered rug defines the relaxing lounge area.  Magazines, newspapers and a TV are free to use.  Fresh flowers also help to liven up the lounge.

Today, the hostel manager is using his computer to update the Hostel's website.  At the reception area, a satisfied guest is checking out.  Access to the outside smoking balcony is via the lounge, however Hostel staff kindly reminds their guests that smoking is bad for your health.

The third floor

Stairs lead to the third floor which is furnished with two bunk beds, a dresser and a computer desk.  Access to the communal bathroom is provided with each stay.
The bathroom has a sink with mirror, toilet and toilet paper, and a shower with hot and cold water.

Though it's hard to see, the shower stall has a glass partition wall. Please clean up after yourself when you are done using the bathroom. Thanks.

Maximum occupancy is 4 people.  I would love to be able to add another floor to the hostel so that men and women could have their own floors, but I can't really justify getting another Cafe Corner modular just to add an extra storey.  For now, it's mixed accomodations at the hostel.

How convenient that fresh coffee is just down the stairs.

As I was writing up this post, I wanted to say that I've completed all the changes I wanted to the Cafe Corner, except, now I'm thinking I might add a skylight to the roof to let more light into the sleeping floor.  Oh well!

If you still can't get enough, here's the links to my other posts about the evolution of Cafe Corner/Sweet Shop/Hostel.

Sweet shop moves into Cafe Corner.

Hostel moves into Cafe Corner

Further revisions to the Cafe Corner

Anyways, thanks so much for staying until the end of this post!  I hope you've enjoyed looking at the pictures as much as I've enjoyed sharing them with you.
Stay safe and wash your hands!   Bye!

Not Lego Bakery and Hostel (aka Cafe Corner) Updates Again

Last year, I made quite a few changes to my Lepin 15002 Cafe Corner modular building.  I converted the main floor to a sweet shop, and the second and third floors into a hostel.  As you can see in my picture, I've changed the original hotel sign to read hostel.  I kept the existing awnings but moved the front door from the corner of the building to the side.  

Here's the rear of the building.  On the second floor, there is a small deck which also provides an overhang for the first floor rear entrance.

Where the door previously existed is a display of the sweets and muffins.  The owner also sells her goods out in front of the shop.

The original baseplate was a green colour which clashed with the  pink walls, so I tore it out and replaced it with a brown baseplate.

There's an extensive collection of baked goods at the shop.

At the other end of the shop is the prep area, oven, drink station and cash.

 Here's a closer look at the station where you can have shakes and smoothies made to order.  The interior of the main floor sweet shop was imported from the Hsanhe 6409-1 Sweet Shop set and then completely customized.

Front door on the main floor has been moved to the side.

 Hostel entrance is next to the sweet shop.

The stairs lead up to the second floor of the modular.  This is where the hostel reception is located.  There's also a lounge, a snack center and a computer workstation.

Access to the deck is via the lounge.

 The third floor of the hostel has 6 bunk beds, storage and seating.

 I will be adding a bathroom in the near future.   Thanks for looking!

Hostel moves into not Lego Lepin 15002 Cafe Corner - Updates!

Last month, I showed you some changes I made to the main floor of the not Lego Lepin 15002 Cafe Corner.  If you recall, I turned the empty space into the new home of the Hsanhe Sweet Shop.   In this blog post, I will show you my modifications to the second and third floors of the Cafe Corner building.

Outside the building, there is this huge white and red sign that used to announce that there was a Hotel on the premises.  Unfortunately, the Lepin and Lego Cafe Corner buildings were never really furnished inside.  I thought about whether or not it was feasible to make a hotel inside the Cafe Corner building.  I have seen some excellent examples of other people being able to pull off the feat, but I thought that the building is too small to be a hotel.

I decided that it could house a Hostel instead of a Hotel.  You could simply just have some bunk beds and it could be really sparsely furnished.   So the first thing I did was to see if I could change the signage outside to say HOSTEL from HOTEL.   I needed to simply add an S to the word.  I had just enough red translucent bricks to make the S, but it was a challenge to figure out how to incorporate it into the existing sign.  After a few failed attempts, I finally made it work as you can see from the picture above.

When I posted the picture of my Hostel/Cafe Corner on Facebook, Rick Downell gave me the inspiration to incorporate a couple of backpacker minifigures.  I don't really have any nice ones, so I just kind of made some guys who looked like they might be hikers.

Here's the two guys coming to stay at the Hostel.

With their giant packs, let's hope the backpackers can make it into the stairwell leading to the Hostel which is located on the second and third floor of the Cafe Corner building.

Time to check in at the reception desk.  You can help yourself to free fruit, and drinks from the small fridge.  If you need to check the Internet, there's a computer desk too.

Hsanhe 6409-1 Sweet Shop moves into the Lepin 15002 Cafe Corner

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. 

It also leads to a new back door where presumably deliveries will be made.  In future I'll probably add an awning over the back door.

Here's one more look at the inside of the Sweet Shop.  The two store employee minifigures also come from the Hsanhe sets.

Apparently, Storm troopers have picked up the scent of the new sweet shop.  Prepare to be invaded!

Building Block sets used

Here is a list of the building sets I used for this mod.  I got them all off Aliexpress.

1.   Lepin Cafe Corner 15002 (knock-off of Lego Cafe Corner 10182)

2.  Hsanhe Sweet Shop 6409-1 (2 sets)

3. Sheng Yuan Friends Shop SY759A

4. Winner Ice Cream Shop 7031

Thanks for looking at my custom Corner Cafe building!  Bye for now.