Weekend Progress

My pick-a-brick order arrived last Friday and I spent the weekend putting it to go use.  Keep in mind I basically started with nothing but the front of the house.

First order of business was to tile the inside floor.

About half my order was the tile pieces for the inside.  The other half was the bottom half of the structure.
After building the bottom I decided to make a trip to the local Lego store and use my last pick-a-brick box from Christmas.  That (along with a lot of my own pieces lying around) allowed me to complete the rest of the walls as seen below.



  

Yes I was kind of going for a stained glass effect on the back.  The problem is, as near as I can find, Lego does not make large clear plates.  So for the time being I have to settle for yellow glass.

I also decided I hate that cream or whatever that color it is.  So the cream on top will be swapped out for the same blue that appears on the front half of the house.  The cream stripe on the bottom will be swapped out for dark grey, the same as the stripe above the windows.

The other problem is that the grey that came in my order is the new grey with a blue tint to it.  Most of the grey bricks I have lying around are the old yellow-grey (or at least they turned yellow with age).  So all of the grey in the top half and in the chimney will be replaced with the new blue grey.

The last thing to do was to figure out how to give the whole thing a roof.  After much discussion it was decided the best thing to do would be to make the roof incline in the opposite direction and meet the front half at a peak.

This was the planning structure so I could visualize exactly what I needed and how many I needed.  I took a page out of the modular buildings and designed it such that the roof is entirely separable from the main building; it only connects by two studs.

Ultimately the roof will be entirely black, except for the base which will actually be the light grey pieces seen here. 



Planning the roof was kind of fun because it involved some math.  It turns out to make things meet evenly at the peak the front roof has to actually come backwards using two slope 1/2 pieces.  The back roof then runs 15 while rising 8 to meet it.  Thus it uses 7 slope 1/2 pieces plus one slop 1 piece.  The bit over the window actually has to run 15 but only rise 7 so it actually uses 7 slope 1/2 pieces and one slope 1/3 piece.  I am quite excited to see how it looks when it's all done.

Needless to say, I am now waiting on another pick-a-brick order.