I saw that box and was ready to be a little sad it had silver stripes and not the red. But now I'm happy.
The red on Lego Chandra’s racing stripes is dark red, the seats have both pure red and dark red. Dark red is closer to Alabama crimson than Georgia red.
The entire time we were putting Lego Chandra, I was thinking that I would probably swap that out but also that the car looked great.
In the pics, it’s hard to tell it’s not pure red, I’m pretty about that.
I put together this Gift With Purchase Lego kit. It is branded 90th anniversary and was intended to launch with the 90th anniversary Lego Castle set (which should arrive in a couple of days), but it came out first.
It’s a cute old school Forestmen build. It’s got two cute minfigs, ostensibly one boy and one girl. I love the minfigs and the little shields with forest Mam heraldry.
We don’t have many Lego sets in our house outside of the Lego room, and we don’t collect Lego sets that are Huge Fig (or human scale). Lego set 10289 Bird of Paradise is an exception.
Lego has made human scaled items like the NES, Atari, various lightsaber hilts, and the typewriter. We do have the typewriter, but mostly we do minfig scale stuff.
ES loves Birds of Paradise. We have planted some in our front yard but they haven’t bloomed yet.
Close up of the blooms.
There are lots of cute Lego floral sets, sadly, most of them don’t have good bases like this one.
We still have Modulars to rebuild and add to the city, so with most things Lego, this is a work in progress.
Very roughly, the Lego on the left of the picture are regular Modular’s while the ones on the right are marvel with Ninjago Gardebs looking sexy behind the marvel buildings.
I started this a few months ago. I initially got white Tudor decals in addition to the green and yellow ones that I used in earlier projects.
This is the estate of Lord and Lady Caballero. Their great house has proudly served as soldiers and dragon riders for Brickingham’s sovereign for generations.
View from the front gate. I built this on a raised baseplate. Notice the young horse in the paddock. The Caballeros have raised fine steeds, both horses and dragons.
I’m really happy with the tile work throughout, and the roof is turning out pretty cool.
I finally finished my castle structure. I still need to build out a bedroom suite, add mini figs and do a small amount of detail work, but I’m mostly done now
I started out thinking I would build a vassal of Brickingham’s estate, but as I built it, there was some scope slippage and I ended up
Making something larger and more opulent.
I’ve decided it is the Caballeros Imperial Palace. If anyone can think of a fun name, let me know, please.
It is designed to project political power by things like displays of wealth but also a treasure, wizards, war planning, and dragon messaging.
I’m going to swap out the shields and make the smaller castle into a gatehouse/guardhouse for the palace.
I had thought they might be rivals when I first conceived of the building.
The approach view
The fancy entrance atop the spiral staircase is for Peers and family primarily. The main entrance is the double black doors opposite the staircase.
Here is our medieval fantasy area.
Here the imperial palace is sitting next to the daily bugle to give you some idea of scale. The new daily bugle set is one of the tallest Lego Sets, it is about one brick taller than my imperial castle.
It’s mostly modular style here are all the major parts separated.
This is the view that travelers by road see as they approach the imperial palace.
Removing the roof, you can see into the grand entrance with its tile work emphasizing service and sacrifice which are the Caballero family words.
The entrance takes you to the Blue Hall where the library with its many quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore lie and leads to the grand ballroom. There is also stairs up to the next level. I include some staircases but in the tower I also often didn’t.
Grand Ballroom
You can see the lovely and expensive blue glass windows and the Wall of Shields, the highest honor a Caballero can achieve is to sacrifice themselves in battle for their fellow troops. Their shields alone can hang here.
The “glass” wall is all blue Lego bricks, they have changed the blue translucent lego bricks of the years so different eras have different colors.
Up the stairs in the library, there are stairs up to the next level, the throne room, a hallway that goes to the treasure and is the waiting area for the throne room. It features nautical tile work.
The hallway/audience waiting area
The throne seats two as the traditions of Lady and Lord Caballero dictate.
The stairs lead up to here where there is a doorway to the tower and a bedroom suite.
The attic area hinges open as you can see.
The Peer entrance. The treasury and mint are located on this floor of the tower as well.
Treasury and mint with gold coin blanks, a press and finished currency.
The floor up from the mint. It has the doorway over to the residence area.
It’s the War Room, literally. This is where they plan the strategy. The Lady with the epaulets is Lady Caballero’s heir. She will lead their armies one day as the Lady Caballero so it’s important for her to learn.
Just another view.
The next floor up in the tower is where Caballeros (both the royals and soldiers)train in martial skills. The walls feature a variety of different weapons.
Also multiple parrots.
Opposite view so you can see more of the weapons.
Wizard quarters, lots of books and work space. The large picture on the wall is a recreation of the painting in our house that our friend Sam gave us.
Here the top floor is off. It’s got large balconies for dragons to land and take off and a clock. On the top of the roof is a statue of the First Lady Caballero who married a young hedge knight and then established the Empire.
View of the balcony and the gates.
The roof is in two parts, taking the top off we can see the real secret to power of the Caballeros: efficient administration of resources on dragonwing.
There are doors on the inside creating an airlock setup. The outer gate can be opened by the dragon riders but the inner can only be opened by the scribes inside.
They take reports from the dragon riders and then send them out with orders. If they’ve been traveling long, the they can go to the guardhouse nearby eat and rest.
I started out thinking I would build a vassal of Brickingham’s estate, but as I built it, there was some scope slippage and I ended up
Making something larger and more opulent.
This is Brickingham’s gatehouse. I decided to do a remodel.
Another view.
I wanted to keep the overall design. Two towers each garrisoned by a different great house. Each tower has three floors: armory, barracks, lookout towers/catapults.
I also wanted to make it a bit more realistic, keeping it a mono color but playing with shape.
I like how it’s turning out.
Side view
Back gate.
Back view of front gate, you can see the ladder for the guards to climb up
Iteration is how I Lego. I build something, take pics of it and stare at the pics when I’m not building until I can just picture it in my head and then I think about changes, and eventually I tear down a section and rebuild it with modifications.
This post will focus mostly on the iterations for the bottom outside wall of Brickingham’s Gatehouse, but I’ll mention other changes as well.
The initial setup. I decided it was just too many windows.
I swapped out two windows for the lion heads which also added depth to the wall. The bottom floor stays like this for a few weeks.
I included this pic to show that when I started to make the second floor, I adjusted the design adding the shield and tile under the windows. Also tower walls on the second floor are symmetrical except for the outer walls removing and the changes that requires.
Also you can see that briefly I made the middle window of the second floor a hole instead of a window frame and window.
Bottom level still unchanged. I like this iteration’s top level, though I ended up making it more ornate.
You can see the final top level structure that I went with.
This is when I made the walls removable and I also added stuff to the flat space on the bottom wall.
Swapped out single tile below the windows for double ingots.
This is where I made the second floor’s outer wall removable, it changes spacing by one plate.
I swapped out the shield and two ingots for two wedges and one ingot. I did this partially to conserve ingots, but also I like this look better. I also added a plate underneath the far left and right double slope pieces closing the gap between it and the shield above.
This is Brickingham’s gatehouse’s “final” form. Here I raised the double slopes above the lion heads. I like it, but I’m not entirely satisfied.
Re: This Old House of Bricks
Re: This Old House of Bricks
Linear Mode
