Tag Archives: Garage

If you need me I’ll be in the garage

Say what you will, but fall is the best seasons for road trips. And since every trip starts from the garage door, Canadian LEGO fan and builder Jean-Philippe Leroux opens for us the doors of his newest build. Apart from perfect autumn mood of the corner, the build allured me with just perfect amount of weathering: a sheet of old newspaper in the window, dry grass, and some old rubbish by the windows. What a beauty!

The garage

But it becomes really cozy when you look inside the garage! With the wall swung open, the garage reveals “perfectly cluttered” interior full of neatest elements. What official sets does it remind you about?

The garage

Getting ready for some historic driving

Like most hobbies, once you start to learn about LEGO you find that there can be a shocking amount of complexity behind just about every aspect. Sure, you can just sit back and enjoy the great photography and clever building that Faber Mandragore accomplished with Roadster Hot Rod. But let’s dig a little and peer into those murky depths. We can start out easy; the air filter in the car is a neck ruffle. An unusual choice, in that the element originated in the Collectible minifigure theme. Those sure look like steering wheels repurposed as the front wheel rims, inside tires introduced in 1959 and not produced since 1977. And is that a bucket handle forming the steering wheel? Each of these parts has a history in other sets and contexts that’s there if you want to go looking for it.

Roadster Hot Rod

But the deepest cut of LEGO history? Those exposed orange-ish bricks in the background are Modulex. Those are tiny architectural planning bricks that LEGO spun off as a side line back in the 1960s. Incorporating them into a standard LEGO creation is never easy, but it’s done here in a seamless fashion. Well, neglecting that the seams between the bricks are what helps unify the whole wall, anyway. *sigh* You know what I mean.

Why buy a new speeder when you can build one?

Does your speeder jerk when accelerating? Or maybe you started noticing that ticking noise coming from the engines after the oil change? I think you should stop by Alexander Blais‘ garage. It’s not the fanciest one, and they might not be accepting credits, but these guys know their trade. Look at all the crates and boxes lying around; some say there is no such spare part they don’t have here in the garage. And forget about silly service droids. You don’t want to trust your lovely speeder to a soulless machine, do you?

Speeder Garage

Where does he get those wonderful toys?

It turns out most people don’t stop collecting toys as adults. For us adult LEGO enthusiasts, we have literal toys but for other grown-ups their toys are a bit harder to define. Take Daniel Church’s “Grownup’s Toy Box” for example. It depicts a nicely built LEGO garage. A motorcycle and a snowblower sit front and center while a hefty toolbox and an array of other tools adorns the background. The brackets holding up the ladder, roof trusses and even the lawnmower handles are constructed from wrenches. The panoramic shot serves this composition nicely. This build even has a soundtrack. These are all neat grown-up toys indeed but is it weird that I still want to play Hungry Hungry Hippos?

Grownup's Toy Box

Get your motor running, head out on the highway

Having built a car or two(hundred) myself, I get a kick out of it when someone else does this good a job showing the automobile some love. This one may be unique because we might be dealing with a young builder here, or at least someone with a cool, supportive mom. Carrie Kokoska is not the builder, however, she just created a new Flickr account to showcase these photos on behalf of her oldest son. “The Bend City Auto Garage” gets its inspiration from an old pharmacy in their local town. We are looking at a builder who is passionate about LEGO and working at his grandpa’s garage, where he restores vintage cars. The posters and stickers both inside and out were designed by the builder’s mom, making this truly a family project.

Side view hot rod on lift

See more of this highly detailed garage and vintage car

Ridin’ high on the Hog

What do you do after you buy the LEGO Harley-Davidson Fat Boy set? If you guessed build it a black and dark red friend and an entire garage for it, then you would be correct. That is clearly the most logical option and a builder who goes by the name Derboor has beat the rest of us to it. The result is part garage, part toy shop and part museum. The clutter, the disarray, and even haphazard pattern on the walls and floor make for a well-used, well-loved space. I’m seeing a refrigerator likely filled with cold refreshments, along with a toy train, model skeleton and an R2-D2 Polybag set. I also spy several trophies, a first aid kit, a spider and even Darth Vader looming in a most uncanny place — but I will let you find that for yourself. What other hidden treasures can you find?

Lego Harley Davidson Garage

After zooming in and discovering all the treasure you can, you might want to also discover our Harley-Davidson set review.

A sweet dream in LEGO

I love LEGO creations that fool the eye. When I first saw Sweet dream in the old garage by AdNorrel, I thought I was looking at a well composed photo of a real-life moment. I was scrolling through images of LEGO creations at the time, so I knew that couldn’t be right. So I took a closer look.

“Oh,” I thought, “that’s a LEGO minifigure in the center. So the garage is probably brick built. Yep. Looks like they put the build in front of their garden outside to get the background….no. Wait.”
“….”
“….wow.”

Sweet dream in the old garage

There are a lot of details partially hidden in the shadows of the garage. The tiling on the wall expertly mimics the slightly warped wood of an older building. Trophies and statuettes hint at past racing glories, blending in with the more functional aspects of the garage. Custom printing on many of the signs adds tantalizing hints of the larger world this creation inhabits. There are indications that a lot more is happening just out of sight, too, as there’s a crane to the right and the front end of a car to the left. Continue reading →

An immersive garage to get your landspeeder serviced

When not writing articles about fine LEGO creations or taking care of my young children, I crawl down to my basement man-cave and build things out of LEGO. Yes, I am a bit like the dad in The LEGO Movie; and also yes, my toddlers ignore my prohibitions on touching the bricks. But some things survive the attack of sticky little fingers, and I am pleased to present the readers of The Brothers Brick with my latest.

As my alter-ego, Henjin_Quilones, I built and shared this landspeeder repair shop as part of an annual Star Wars competition on Eurobricks. Run by a Twi’lek named Veenac’ebla, the garage on Nar Shaddaa services many types of speeders, often providing them with upgrades to boost the specs. Three speeders, all loosely inspired by real-world cars, sit in the shop for repairs. The red and the grey speeders hearken to classic muscle cars (and to the M-68 from Solo), while the dark blue was inspired by curvy sports cars.

Speeder Repairs

See more of this shady landspeeder garage

This Mustang is in the shop for repairs

You may have noticed an abundance of Ford Mustangs featured on The Brothers Brick lately. The recent trend was ignited by a LEGO IDEAS contest, celebrating the Mustang in beautiful scenery. After wowing us by finding a Mustang in a barn, Andrea Lattanzio’s latest creation finds this Mustang in the shop. While the car itself is flawless, focus of the contest is on the scenery. And this garage is spot on.

Mustang fever: the pony at the shop

The structure is rife with subtle yet brilliant techniques, from the checkered pattern on the wall – alluding to the shop owner’s dreams on race day – to the broken window adding that extra dose of realism. My favourite technique is the droid arms and skeleton legs suspending the overhead lights. Not to be overlooked is the apparent master class in brick built garage and warehouse tools. The pallet jack, air compressor, drill press, gas pump and table vice are all amazing details that help make this garage beautiful.

Immerse yourself in an awe-inspiring auto repair shop

Some of us here at the Brothers Brick are big fans of car builds. Yet, every good car needs an equally good auto repair shop to continue running, and this LEGO scene built by Ben Pitchford fits the bill. It has all the tools to get your motor running and on the highway. You can even beef up your favorite ride with the monster of an engine peeking out from the right. Best of all, everything is framed within an immersive, self-contained image. Columns and beams extending forward make you feel like you’re a part of the crew, so much so that you can almost smell the gasoline.

Auto Repair Shop

The restoration of a hot rod

Builder Pixeljunkie’s latest creation is a charming old auto shop where a group of builders works to restore a classic car to from its barn-fresh state to a splendid showpiece. A series of images transcribe the journey, beginning with the mottled and rusted car and a simple blueprint of what might be.

Vintage Garage Diorama Scene 4

Throughout the scenes, the workshop is packed full to bursting with intricate details that bring the scene to life. Surrounding the crew is all the detritus common to a mechanic, from tools and dusty equipment to overflowing waste bins and parts shelves. This shop truly feels lived in. Continue reading →

From parts car to restored racing legend, this garage has it all.

Over the past few weeks, I have been following Pixeljunkie’s progress on an exciting series of photographs that seemingly depict the restoration of a classic 1950s Mercedes race car. Time and time again, Pixeljunkie has demonstrated an impeccable talent in building minifigure-scale vehicles and setting the scene (like his Bugatti we featured back in July). His latest image depicts a gritty but gorgeous-looking garage, along with his partially stripped down Mercedes race car. Pixeljunkie opted to leave the engine exposed, and it sports a fair amount of detail for being confined within such a small space.

Vintage Garage

With the extensive repairs out of the way, it’s time to load the car up for transport. The fully restored racer looks simply stunning, and the small team of restorers is just as charming as the car itself. Out of the entire lot, the middle-aged motorhead with cigarette in hand is my favorite (the cigarette itself is an interesting use of three Nanoblock pieces). Several other fun details can be found in Pixeljunkie’s garage, such as a loft area with a drafting table and sink. Meanwhile, shelves are filled with a wide variety of tiny tools.

See the vintage Mercedes racing car in its restored glory