Full frontal view of town house. With enough black slopes, I was able to build my first hipped roof, with a peaked rather than a flat top. However, I plan on coming back and redoing it in dark bluish gray, to match the section over the bay window, and with wider eaves (by one full stud all around). I’ll also want to dress it up with some landscaping before it’s finished.
I had long wanted to do a building with quoins, and when I got back into building, I found that Lego.com had marketed a set in 2007 [4954 Town House] that was pretty close to what I had imagined. It was no longer available from Lego Shop@Home, but it was still available on BrickLink. The colors were perfect and two of the sets gave me most of the bricks needed for my own version, except for the windows. The set had no windows on the rear or left sides. Lego.com models tend to include economies like that, to keep them reasonably affordable.
I can’t take credit for the front steps. They are borrowed from 10190 Market Street (2007). The new FACTORY line from Lego.com, which 10190 is a part of, is another reason why this was a good time for me to get back into building with Lego. Large quantities of standard architectural building elements are now available, and not just in red, blue and yellow. I’ll probably be building mostly in tan, though I’m contemplating a Victorian in medium blue and/or white. I like standard yellow as well, as used in their 4996 Beach House (2008). Too bad my favorite light yellow is no longer available, though!
View of town house from the left and front.
View of town house from the right and front, showing chimney. It’s hard to tell from this picture, but I did the chimney in old light gray bricks, thinking the variation would be a nice touch of realism. I’m not that happy with the way it turned out, though, with stripes of the new light bluish gray at each floor level, so I plan on rebuilding it all in old light gray (when I get the plates needed) and with some of the 2877 ridged bricks like I used on the basement walls for texture and added visual interest.
View of town house from the rear. I’ve already modified this quite a bit since the original version, adding quoins to the corner in the center of the pic, and eliminating a second story door overhang. This is definitely a cold-climate house. It’s got a steep, peaked roof to shed snow and no porches, sun rooms, or outside-living areas. I like a lot of light, but have settled for the large bay windows on both floors and the double-height windows where they won’t interfere with privacy or take up room needed for kitchen fixtures.
View of town house interior, from the rear and above. This still needs a lot of work. Each story comes off as well as the roof, so there could be a full second story floor rather than just the rim shown and still have full access to the first story rooms, but if I don’t furnish the second story rooms, I may not bother adding a full floor. I’m still collecting pieces for this part of the project, including some in sand red, sand blue and sand green.
Photo of basement (added 12.29.08)
The basement is accessible, but it’s not full depth, so I probably won’t furnish it. The photo doesn’t show much detail, but at least if I have to disassemble the model and then want to build it again later I’ll have a record of the dimensions.