This weekend, I finally got around to building one of my Christmas presents, the Lego Cafe Corner -10182. It’s easily the largest set I’ve ever put together, and took a fair amount of time to build. This set was also record-setting in that it was the first set I’ve ever built that had a defective piece.
Now, that might not seem like a big deal to most of you, but understand that I’ve built about 100 sets, and have NEVER, until now, found a piece that was anything but perfect. I also have NEVER, and still have never, been missing a piece from a set. In fact, I have such confidence in the Lego folks that If I can’t find a piece while building, I check the floor and bags before I even think that it might not be there.
So, the Cafe corner.
This is what you find inside the box.
The bags are numbered so that you can build in stages. I made the mistake of dumping all of the stage 1 bags together on the table. Normally, this isn’t a problem. This kit has so many pieces that it slowed me down a lot, hunting for small detail pieces in the pile.
You can see my constant assistant Finny in the right hand side of that shot. While I built, Finny brought his Batman and Robin Lego minifigs over to “help”. I got stuck in, and looked up after a while to find this:
Finny had used extra pieces to make a full coffee bar.
And later, Batman and Robin enjoy some TV inside the partially built cafe.
I finished the first floor, and called it a night.
Next day. I went over to the table where I was building, and found that something strange had happen overnight. (Or possibly earlier in the morning when my 5 year old was on his own).
Batman had clearly dealt with some time of break-in, which resulted in an injury to the shop keeper (seen inside).
After that, the second and third floors were built without incident.
And here is the completed piece.
Finally, here is a close up of one side of the set.
This set was fun to build, and taught me a couple of interesting building techniques, which I think I can use to add to the town. Apart from a set feature pieces, I have most of what I’d need to add a few more buildings. Off to bricklink for some windows.
