My latest Not Lego MOC modular - 14 Stud Wide Townhouse

Hey brick fans, welcome back to Bricks and Figs!  I want to show you my latest modular building MOC (My Own Creation), it's a 14 stud wide townhouse al composed of non Lego bricks.  Why 14 studs, you ask?  

Here's the story.  I store many of my modular buildings in my Ikea Billy bookcase, which has the perfect depth, but if you try to place three 32 stud baseplates into the shelf, it won't fit.  The shelf can only accept a total stud width of 32 + 32 + 30 studs.  So the 30 studs can be split into one modular that is 16 studs wide leaving a remainder of 14 studs.  So in order to make the most effective use of the space, I created a 14 stud wide modular building.   As you can see in the above picture, all my buildings now fit perfectly together.

A warning that his blog post has lots of pictures!

The Concept Building

Here was the preliminary building I started with.  The building sits on a number of different sized plates that total 14 studs wide and 32 studs deep.  I initially envisioned a store on the main floor with two more levels of living space above.

But the realities of trying to squeeze in a staircase on each floor made it hard to come up with any kind of store with useable space on the ground level.  The staircase runs up the rear of the building.  I have had these red windows from a long time ago but never had a chance to use them until now.   Masonry bricks adorn the second and third floors.  

This is what I started with before adding the staircases to each level. I put down red and grey tiles on the main floor and red and white tiles on the upper floors to match the red exterior awnings of the concept building.

The Final Product

After I added the interiors, I realized that the my townhouse looked too much like a commercial building with it's red/red and white awnings, although it no longer housed any kind of storefront.  I decided to replace the red and red/white awnings with black ones to give the building a more residential feel.

My townhouse is completely modular, which means you can take apart each floor of the building.   Here's the four sections of the building all separated.

The First Floor - Living Room and Bathroom

So in place of any kind of commercial shop, the first floor of the townhouse is composed of the living room and a two piece powder room, with a staircase leading to the second floor.

On the ground floor outside, there's the sidewalk that follows the standards of other Lego like modular buildings.  I used a big bay window that was from an Enlighten brand police station.  Above the front door is a grille for ventilation.
The black canopy roof runs the entire width of the building.

Here's how the first floor looks after removing the rest of the building.  Because the main floor has higher ceilings, I had to use a long and a short stair part separated by a landing.

From this viewpoint, you can see the doorway that accesses the powder room located beneath the staircase.  The yellow brick walls are sourced from a Brick Tech set.

With the front of the building removed, you can get a better view of the living room.  The green armchair is taken from the Lepin brand Sanctum Santorum set.  The wall unit is from one of the Xingbao brand home furnishing rooms.

Here's another look at the furniture accessories on the main floor.  There's a stand with a potted plant.  The wall unit has several drawers and storage shelves with stereo amplifier.  For entertainment, there's a flat screen TV and ghetto blaster.  The powder room wall has been removed, so that you can see the sink, toilet and small window.  On the walls are a clock and the HVAC system tied into the vent over the front door.

 I'm thinking about pushing the back and front walls out by a stud or two to make the ground floor larger because it's a tad cramped.  Another project for another day.

The Second Floor - Kitchen

On the second floor is where the kitchen is located.  Despite the small space, I was able to add a few lower and upper cabinets with an oven with cooktop and sink on one wall.

On the other wall is a contemporary counter depth fridge with french doors.  Flanking the fridge is a shelf for mugs and a mop.

If you're interested in the kitchen design, the build tutorial can be found on Jaystepher's Youtube channel.

Rounding out the accessories on this floor are the kitchen table and chairs, another HVAC unit and clock.  The staircase continues up to the third floor.

On this floor, the stair wall is made up of flesh coloured bricks and army green accents.

The Third Floor - Bedroom

Here we are on the third floor where we find the bedroom.   The desk has two drawers, a table lamp, a computer, mouse and a mug.  The built in ladder rungs on the wall provide access to the rooftop.

 From this view of the bedroom, you will find a guitar and a working murphy bed.

I busted open the front wall for better viewing.  Oh yeah, I forgot there's another HVAC unit up here as well, but no clock because you can get the time by checking the computer.

The murphy bed design is a slightly modified version of the one found in the Lego/Lepin Parisian Restaurant modular.  Here is the bed in the down position. I ran out of flat tiles for the bed cover so I had to use two similar coloured jumper plates at the foot of the bed.

Ok, let's put the bed away, shall we?

Lots more room with the bed tucked away.

The Rooftop 

I was going to leave the rooftop empty, but then I decided to use some of the furniture from my recently acquired DG brand Corner Garage.  That's where the red lounger and umbrella are from. Other fun accessories are the charcoal grill, some fish and some hot dogs.

The access door is taken from Peter Parker's apartment aka Sanctum Santorum.

 Well, that's it!  Thanks for staying until the end.  I got lots of my spare brick pieces rom Aliexpress.  Hope you enjoyed looking at my 14 stud wide modular townhouse.   See you next time!

Hsanhe 6409-2 Apple store MOC modular building gets a makeover

 

Hi and welcome back to Its Not Lego!  Today I'm showing you a re-build of an older set that I had previously built.  It's the Hsanhe 6409-2 Apple store.  Here's the link to what the build looked like last.   I got tired of the white windows and the footprint of the building was a lot more complicated than it needed to be.

 So in this iteration, I've decided to keep it simple again.  The Apple store returns to its signature all black facade while staying on the 20 stud wide custom baseplate.  On the sidewalk, I replaced the tree from the previous build with a standard street lamp.

When I built the last version of the Apple store, I didn't have enough white bricks for the side walls hence I used a lot of the window pieces I had accumulated from the Bela friends sets.  The new walls have now been sourced from Block Tech brand bricks.

The rear wall hasn't changed much other than being expanded to slot in between the two side walls.

As with all of my other modular MOCs, the roof lifts off to reveal the interior.

The interior of the store has been completely revamped.  I used white and light gray tiles for the floor.  There are banks of computers on both sides of the store.
The table in the front center was kept from the original build. 

The back wall has glass shelves for merchandise display and pulls away easily to provide better viewing of the interior.  I added a long counter for product checkout.  I just ordered some keyboard and monitor printed tiles from Aliexpress to replace the blank tiles that are the existing computers.

It's a slow day in the store so there are only three customers inside and a store employee however there's a lot of room if I wanted to add more minifigures.

Here's the view looking towards the back wall behind the counter.

Hey what's that Google home mini doing in the Apple store?

Outside of the Apple store, I have three more minifigures going about their business.

Overhead drone shot.

Finally, here's the new version of the Apple store situated in between my Hsanhe McDonalds restaurant and Hsanhe 7-11 convenience store, which are also completely revamped both inside and out.   Hope you enjoyed this latest update to my Hsanhe Apple store. What do you think, do you prefer this version or the previous version of my Apple store moc? Let me know in the comments section below.  See you next time!

Sembo 6064 Not Lego French Fries Concession Stand MOD

Hi Building block fans!  Today our featured build is the French Fries concession stand that is part of the Mini Food Shop series of buildings.  The brand is Sembo and the set number is 6064.

I'd like to point out that the majority of these mini shops are a lot smaller than than the normal minifig scale shops like Lego or Hsanhe.  If you look closely at the top picture, you will see quite a difference in the scale of the French Fries shop compared to its neighbouring shops.  I was curious to see if the Sembo set could be used in my modular town.

I was pleasantly surprised that my set was quickly delivered after 2 weeks of ordering it off Aliexpress.

Although there's no mention of the number of pieces for the concession stand, I counted a total of 141 pieces from the 2 sided instruction sheet. 

Here's all the pieces unpacked and ready for building.  Oh I almost forgot to mention that there's a sticker sheet with the word Fries and a small menu.

I completed the build in no time flat and here's the finished french fries stand sans stickers.  Er, those line-up stands look a tad small.  There's pegs on each side of the building which I assume allow you to connect this set to the others in the mini shop series.  I think those french fries on top of the roof really make the building pop.

In case you were wondering what the interior holds, there's a computer screen for taking orders and a couple of small canisters on the counter, maybe they are for the salt and vinegar?  On the floor, I think one side holds a sink and tap and the other side is a box with a paddle.  I have no idea what it's supposed to represent.

Here's a look at the side of the concession stand.  There's 2 windows and some masonry bricks which is repeated on both sides of the building.

The French Fries stand does not come with any minifigures, so if you decide to get this set, you'll have to provide at least a minifig or two, to represent an employee and a customer.   In the pic above you can see that the scale of the building is not too bad and scales well to the minifigure.  This set is pretty good as it is, but I wanted to reduce its size so it would match the scale of my other concession stands.

I think I was able to reduce the size of the building by about 20 to 30%.  Here's a look at all the parts I was able to strip away.  That includes the sink and the mystery box.  Fortunately I can reuse those 4 windows in my other modular buildings.

I substituted the white windows for some brown window frames and lowered the counter height.  I had some extra french fry block pieces so I put one on the counter.  I don't normally put the stickers on my sets, but I thought in this case, the french fries stand looks a lot better with the menu.  Too bad they X'd out the prices though!

Here's the Sembo french fries stand next to some other concession stands.  The two stands immediately to the left are from the Lepin Roller Coaster set 15039 which you can find here on my other blog Its-Not-Lego.blogspot.com. 

Hope you enjoyed the pics and quick review!

Brand: Sembo

Model: French Fries Stand 6064

Number of pieces: 141

Number of minifigures: None