LEGO • Page 3

it really is. One very true detail that a lot of reviews mention is that from any angle or whichever way you look at it, it looks amazing. There is no definitive front or back so no matter how you have this placed on a shelf or table it’s gorgeous and so detailed. Can’t wait to put the new A-Frame Cabin next to it once I have that built.

 

Where have you been able to store all of these sets?

 

I wish I didn’t live in such a tiny apartment. I’d have so many more Lego sets. I have the Home Alone house and the Back to the Future Delorean but nowhere to display them. Haha.

 

That has become quite a dilemma and first world problem for me lol.

I took this shelf out of laundry room, which used to house all of my running shoes and misc. running stuff and other random shit so I bought some plastic 3-drawer rollers with wheels and out stuff in there so I could move the Lego sets to the shelf. But the Hogwarts castle, Lion Knights’ Castle, Home Alone house and haunted house definitely won’t fit height wise or depth wise on this so now I’m thinking of getting shelves that connect to the walls and maybe put some way up so I can still have furniture or other stuff underneath them. Hell, just having a space to build some of these sets will be a challenge. bought bought a flat, finished / smooth 2 x 4 from Home Depot yesterday to at least build the bigger sets on but I’m like “uh… how do I pick this up once built or even half built?!” The Treehouse has a spot you can pick it up by. The castles? I’m assuming no. Same thing with Home Alone house which is a 20 dollar coffee table I bought last week so I could put it somewhere lol.

I’m also conflicted because I love the physical presence of everything so I want to keep the manuals and the boxes. I’m actually breaking down the boxes tonight in hopes I can fit most inside the larger Home Alone box. I also want to keep the shipping boxes for future gifts because I KNOW I’m gonna need them for gifts and will be pissed if I get rid of them so breaking them down too.

For me, I hate clutter around my apartment so the last few weeks have been a bit mentally draining because of how much space everything takes up. I had the same issue years ago when I got really into reading and buying books. I had a literal entire wall of my living room as bookshelves that were filled so that was like 20 x 5 of space and eventually when I downsized I felt better about it. For Lego sets I’m not sure if I will keep all of them built or maybe only leave the bigger ones or my favorites built and put the rest back into the boxes.

 

I watched a video last week on YouTube of some guy that has like, 1,200 sets or some shit and the video is close to 90 minutes as he walks through everything and on one hand it was really cool to see but on another was horrifying and claustrophobic as he had shit on every wall and hanging from the ceiling and stuffed in drawers and I’m like, “ok I’m not gonna let it get to that level, I won’t be able to tolerate that”.

There are already some sets I bought and built that were just impulse buys because I wanted something to build and in the honeymoon phase with discovering how relaxing it is to build Lego sets, so some of those may be donated or given to people or at least taken apart and boxed for awhile.

 

Going to start building the Lion Knights’ Castle tonight. Very excited and will take my sweet sweet time with it.

Meanwhile Lego telling me that the medieval blacksmith set and the Ninjago city set are back in stock was a way to make me smile immediately followed by a wince lol and I read something today that said, “if you can afford it, it’s a hobby. If you can’t afford it and can’t stop, then it’s a problem” and maybe thats not the perfect way to view things, for me it works and still falls in the hobby camp since besides running, that’s all I’ve really spent money on for a number of years, and besides shoes that hasn’t been a terribly expensive hobby. Not that there’s anything wrong with saving money but well, that’s boring, and we’ll all likely be dead in 15-20 so might as well build some Lego sets in the meantime.

 

Home Alone (21330)
3,955 pieces
4 minifigures, 1 vehicle, 1 trashcan, 1 sled



Finally remembered to take pictures of this today and give it a good dusting.

Having not opened this or looked at it in a few weeks, it really made me smile and giddy to remember all of the details in this thing. Probably tied with the Treehouse in a lot of ways for most enjoyable build, but this is still my favorite build so far (well, until finishing a certain castle yesterday). You may think building a rectangle house would be boring but this definitely was not.



I can't imagine a fan of Home Alone not loving this set. It essentially has everything except the damn pizza guy knocking over the statue out front.

Buzz's room has collapsible shelves (back left in image below) that I actually made wrong the first time and it wasn't nerve-wracking going back to correct it.



The roof opens up to access the attic which is nice and unexpected.



My only real complain issue is that the roof of the kitchen doesn't open like the roof, so it's basically impossible to do anything with the kitchen or basement with truly taking apart the set. and there are so many details in the kitchen! and you can't fucking see it when complete lol so including pics from the website to show the details.





continued.

 

Living room and dining room have movable parts to replicate the fake party Kevin throws, which is a great touch.



dining room:


I'm blown away by the details in the basement windows that I didn't even really notice while building. Very cool and this would be a set that would be a lot of fun to rebuild because there is so much you forget that is in this set.



Basement, which again, is awesome and includes a light up furnace, but impossible to use without taking the set apart, which strikes me as more and more unusual by the minute lol





Parents bedroom is also impossible to actually use and I've forgotten what is even in there lol



Very fun set, couldn't recommend enough. Even includes the treehouse which is wild since it's in like 3 minutes of scenes in the movie.





5 minifigures and while no Buzz figure, the set does include the picture of his woof-worthy girlfriend!



Great touch to add the plumbing truck. the back opens and Harry has a police hat and some other goodies back there.

 

That home alone set is sick as hell

 

I have the Home Alone set too! It’s soooo cool. All the Easter eggs and nods to the movies are so awesome!

 

Is it worth the price tag?

 

@TomG I’m going to say yes, but honestly my word doesn’t mean much because I’ve been sucked into the Lego world the last 6-8 weeks and seem to have lost all self control.

I will say, if you can afford it, if you enjoy the movie and/or know that you enjoy building Lego sets, it’s absolutely a no-brainer. Weird, unrecognized benefits of the set is that it doesn’t take up a ton of room and is easy to hold/carry. Some sets I feel real apprehensive about moving, but the Home Alone house is built like a tank and well, it’s a house so it’s an easy rectangle to carry for the most part.

I’ve read that some people will build it every year around the holidays with their kids or SO while watching it so it definitely seems unexpectedly “reusable” compared to some sets but that’s totally dependent on the person of course.

 

@TomG and not to pressure you into a decision but I’m learning that most sets get retired after 2-4 years and I know the Home Alone house at times has been listed as “hard to find” but that may just have been during the holiday rush. Google tells me the set was released in November 2021 so I would suspect it has at least another year left or not longer so if you wanted to wait and decide you should have that available to you.

 

ahhhh, I might need to do that. My kids would love to rebuild this each year!

 

Love seeing all these sets, some of these are amazing! I only have a few Star Wars sets but if I figure out a better place to display them hopefully I'll start getting more

 

A-Frame Cabin (21338)
2,082 pieces
4 minifigures

If ever there was a "love/gasp at first sight" for a Lego set, this one was it for me.



This was so peaceful and fun to put together. Definitely not challenging and so many little details inside the cabin in each room and section.





What really blows my mind is that the roof/walls do not connect or clip on to anything, they just kind of "sit" in place. Fine for me, but I just know that I'm going to be moving this and forget that the roof isn't attached and it's gonna fall off - although it may not bust apart as it's a pretty solid piece without a lot of locations to break apart.



The little wood shed on the side and the other area on the back hold in place with the blue pieces shown below, but never lock in place. a very smart and cool move is that you can group those two sections together separately from the cabin which is a nice touch.





A wonderful set with a lot of knick-knacks inside, some great faces on the figures and looks awesome next to the treehouse set.

 

Haunted House (10273)
3,231 pieces
9 minifigures



This will probably sound like my most critical recap regarding a Lego set yet and I'm certainly not negative about this set, it just had a lot of things that stood out to me compared to other sets I've built the last few months.

I've started to try and remember to take pictures every few bags to show the progress since once the set is built you never really remember or see what it looked like at the time so it's kind of fun to go back and see the process.





This set is fucking HUGE. Granted, the tallness comes from the elevator and there isn't really a second floor, but this is like 5-6" taller than the Lion Knights' Castle, which I did not expect but could have easily found out if I read the dimensions of course lol.

If there is one thing I would have done before spending all my money on Lego sets it would have been researching shelves because goddamn it takes time and is a bit nervous to move so many goddamn sets as I run out of room lmao

Anyway, back to the set.

Very, very curious if the wheelchair figurine is a nod to the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre. I haven't seen every horror movie around but honestly can't recall any other horror movie having a character in a wheelchair so I wonder if that's why such a figurine is included here.



One thing I didn't really notice until after completing the set is that from the outside, there's really not anything that indicates what the set is. There is a gravestone in the front yard behind the fence, but other than that there isn't anything that screams haunted house to me. Not necessarily a bad thing but feel like most sets instantly identify what they are - treehouse, cabin, castle, Seinfeld set, etc. I do love the green coloring of the house though, Love most shades of green for sure.



Lots of neat interior details - skulls, upside down skeleton for... some reason lol, heads in jars, the organ looks great and was a fun mini-build. The pharaoh head was unexpected and the install guide came with a bit of a story on each page for what you were building. The image / sign way to the left lights up when you press in the sign on the front of the house. Always fun to see shit light up.



A lot of reviews had people unhappy about the elevator assembly and usage and I kind of have to agree. Picture below is back of the house.



The chain for the elevator wasn't a hassle to put together for me even though it was literally 120+ fucking pieces linked together. What blows my mind is that there is nothing on the elevator chain that actually gets assembled to the elevator lift (what is the part you stand in in an elevator called?).

In the picture above, there is a horizontal gray piece near the top and there are two of these on the chain and I believe that this catches on the back of the lift and then pulls the lift up/down. I tried this a few times with success and a few times the lift got stuck and then, uh, well, you can't really do much lol but somehow i got it back down and didn't break the chain



What's very odd to me though is that once you put the left in, you build the walls around it in front so you can't remove the lift. So why not have the chain connect to it more securely? You'd have to take the walls off the front to remove the lift which I can't imagine people would do a lot, so might as well secure the lift to the chain better but that's just me.



Lastly, my other "gripe" is that this set feels much more like a display piece than something someone could play with in odd ways. When opened up, there is no logic to the layout, so this doesn't feel like a house. There are no stairs to other floors or anything that makes it seem like an actual "house" whereas the Home Alone house, castles, the Treehouse, the Cabin all have steps to get from floor to floor. This set opens like a display piece for visuals and then they put the title of "haunted house" on it.

Very perplexing is that when closed up, there are no real places to put the minifigures. and one of the pieces is a wheelchair and there is no logical place to put that so you can't even really have the minifigures placed somewhere so when you open it it's a "scene" I had to stack them up like boxes in a corner somewhere lol.

I would have rather they removed the elevator and had a bigger second floor.

The build was also a bit repetitive which I kind of expected for a house set - the sections with windows and whatnot were fine/enjoyable because almost all Lego is, but could certainly bore some pretty quickly - especially when you get to the section for the elevator.

There are also seemingly random pieces that stick out of the back (a few pics up) that make it feel unfinished or rushed to completion as if there was a bigger idea going on and then the budget got cut or a brick limit was put in place. Not as clean as the other sets around this price point have been.

Not a bad set, probably wish I could have gotten it for a little cheaper than the standard price but it is what it is. Look at my super artistic shot below, capturing the horror movie I was watching while building! What talent!

 

How long does it usually take you to build a set of this size?

 

I’d say a week, week and a half give or take. I certainly take my time with it and maybe complete 2-3 bags a night.

I also will organize the pieces from the bag before starting so I’ll open bag 2 and sort by color and then by size and then start the build. Feel like that makes the build go smoother as I know where certain pieces are after awhile and it’s kind of relaxing to sort before getting started whereas some people will simply open a bag, dump it out and then dig through it every 5-10 seconds to find the one they need. That doesn’t sound appealing to me but I also get people wouldn’t find it appealing to spend 30-40 minutes organizing the pieces lol

 

The sound of rustling around LEGOS is nice for me personally

 

definiteky get that and don’t mind the sound- certainly nothing else like it!

For me, another joy that I get out of laying out each bag at a time is looking at all the pieces from a bag and wondering how it’s going to all come together. I actually tend to avoid looking at sets too much and even avoid looking at what each bag makes a whole lot so it’s kind of a surprise for me with each mini-accomplishment or completing each bag and just being in awe of how the fuck did someone come up with this and out this all together. Just blows my mind and always will - just truly could never do that kind of thing, just amazing to me.

 

I got the great pyramid of Giza, going to tear into that this week!

 

Lego seems to be pretty good with not having things ship or release early. My Rivendell set arrived today and the shipping box has this label on it which I find a little peculiar but I think just shows how on top of things Lego is for being such a huge company - I take this to mean that they already had a bunch of sets prepackaged since the label is on the shipping box not the product box. Which would make sense - they know they’re gonna ship wor of orders, might as well have sets already ready to go and just throw the shipping label on it instead of wasting additional time having someone or a machine out the set into a box and then label it.

 

the Up set is available again at Target:

Lego Disney And Pixar ‘up’ House For Disney Movie Fans 43217 : Target

 

I haven’t kept up with updating pictures with each complete set as I tend to forget that and whatnot, but will finally start on Rivendell tonight. After building Hogwarts and some other bigger sets I realized I needed a bigger, better building area before starting Rivendell so bought a dining room table that I will use just as an adult should - to build Lego sets.