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.

Lepin 15010 Parisian Restaurant: Not One But Two!

In May, I bought another Lepin Parisian Restaurant 15010 from Aliexpress because it was only $45 USD and that included shipping.  Normally this set costs around $65 to $70 USD due to the extra cost of DHL shipping.  The Aliexpress store/drop shipper got around the shipping costs by sending me the building blocks in two separate packages.  Each package only weighed around 1.5 Kg, so they could send it via China e-Packet service.  I think if packages are under 2 Kg, Aliexpress sellers can use e-Packet, otherwise anything heavier has to use DHL.

Surprisingly, I got all the parts for the Lepin Parisian Restaurant, but I had already decided that I wanted to modify the newer Parisian Restaurant.  Here is a list of the primary modifications I made to the most recent set:

1.  Reverse elevation
2.  Change the building colour
3.  Change the front entrance

I made other changes too, but I'll save all the good stuff and pics for a more detailed blog post, coming soon!

My Collection of Lego and Non Lego Fire Rescue Building Sets

Today, I'll be showing you my small collection of Fire and Rescue building sets.  Most of them are not Lego but I do have a few Lego sets as well.   The little utility vehicle above comes from the Kazi 8052 Fire Station set.

This is the Fire Department Car, model 8057, also by Kazi.  You can tell the Kazi models by the crappy wheels that they come with.  I believe this is a copy of an older Lego model.

Another Kazi model, this one is model 8055. It's a Fire Department pickup truck with trailer. This is a near bootleg of Lego model 7942.

This was my first Gudi model fire truck 9209.  I like that it's wheels are similar to that of Lego models. 

This model is the Fire Truck model 8054 by Kazi.

Another Gudi brand fire apparatus,  this fire truck is from the Fire Rescuer set 9215.

I modified this Kazi 8053 Fire Snorkel model by extending the cab.

Here's an actual Lego model in my collection.  It's the Fire Truck from the Fire Emergency set 60003.

Here's my other Lego model.  It's the Fire Department Helicopter 7206.

The Kazi Fire Station 8052.  

As part of my Fire Marine unit, this model is from Gudi 9213.

 And finally, this big Fire and Rescue ship, by Enlighten, model 909.  Despite it's massive size it only has 361 pieces.

I have a soft spot for Fire and Rescue Apparatus as you can tell from my building block collection.   I also collect Fire Engine Diecast models which you can find on my other blog:

http://code3diecast.blogspot.com

Just curious, does anyone else collect Fire and Rescue building sets or diecast?  Please leave me a comment below.

Thanks for visiting!!