Hello, from NY

Hemlock Falls · February 5, 2015

IMG_7011 by Hemlock Falls, on Flickr This was from 1977 or 1978, possibly my first Lego set. Some of my earliest memories are of Legos. As I grew other toys kind of stole the spotlight, starting with Star Wars, then GoBots, He-Man, Transformers and GI Joe. But Leogs were always there. My brother and I had a suitcase under the bed filled with Lego pieces. We had Town, Space and Castle Legos, but sets never seemed to stay together for long. The majority of our Lego time was making half-thought out buildings, vehicles and robots, and seeing who could make the best lightsabers out of the longest pieces. I remember very vividly my 12th birthday when I got some Space set and came to the realization that I had outgrown Legos, and I haven't thought twice about it for almost 30 years. My brother however collected Star Wars toys and Legos throughout our teens, 20s and 30s. In the past few years I noticed him getting more Lego stuff like Hogwarts and the Ecto-1. I was not interested, I was actually just surprised at how expensive Legos had become. Last August I did buy my daughter a Friends horse show set, but still wasn't into it myself and ashamed that I had spent $40 on this dinky little toy for her. In September my brother asked if I would assemble the Palace Theater for him. I thought "why the hell would you buy a Lego set for $150 and not even want to put it together?" But I agreed to help him with it. My daughter and I put most of the building together, then my girlfriend came home and kind of scoffed at this obnoxiously expensive model we were working on. I gave her the limo from PC to put together. We all enjoyed the experience. Later my daughter went home to her mom and my girlfriend expressed how enjoyable it was to do Legos for a little while. We got on our tablets and started checking out some of the other modular and stuff. At around 9pm that night we ended up driving out to Target to get the Bike Shop & Café set. IMG_5200 by Hemlock Falls, on Flickr This is where it all started about 4 1/2 months ago. Then I proceeded to buld the collection on a shelf in our loft. IMG_5273 by Hemlock Falls, on Flickr Soon the shelf wasn't big enough so I relocated to a table out printer was on. IMG_5295 by Hemlock Falls, on Flickr I tried to incorporate my daughter's Friends horse set, because if this was going to make any sense it would be for us to play with together. Eventually though, I had gotten too much stuff for myself and had to give her her own table. IMG_5691 by Hemlock Falls, on Flickr My brother brought his theater over to add to the table, and soon bought the train station, daily bugle building, and small cottage to add to it. Since then we haven't gotten along as well and I gave him his stuff back. Soon enough, though, I actually had to take my daughter's table to add to mine. IMG_6094 by Hemlock Falls, on Flickr It felt bad to take her table, and mine was very cluttered. I decided I needed to make myself a table so I began designing ideas. IMG_6349 by Hemlock Falls, on Flickr I had many ideas, but stuck with the 'L' shaped in the corner so that I could have my side and my daughter could have her smaller side. I had to make something to cover up the cubby door in the corner, so I decided it would be like a mountain. IMG_6358 by Hemlock Falls, on Flickr IMG_6366 by Hemlock Falls, on Flickr IMG_6364 by Hemlock Falls, on Flickr IMG_6373 by Hemlock Falls, on Flickr IMG_6376 by Hemlock Falls, on Flickr IMG_6391 by Hemlock Falls, on Flickr IMG_6400 by Hemlock Falls, on Flickr IMG_6408 by Hemlock Falls, on Flickr IMG_6445 by Hemlock Falls, on Flickr Also, for Xmas my girlfriend's parents asked me what I wanted for about $200. I said I'd like a Lego train, and went with the Horizon Express with the PFs for it. My girl got me the Parisian Restaurant and I got us the Grand Emporium for something to do for New Years. She does not share my obsession with Legos, but she says she really enjoys when we do build the buildings together. As long as I don't have money problems because of this. IMG_6909 by Hemlock Falls, on Flickr So here it is. I am very much in love with my Lego table, I am calling it Hemlock Falls. I have many plans for this display, like having the train elevated over the water part before going thru a tunnel, thru the mountain and out again behind the city. I want to terraform the mountain with a lot of tall angled grey pieces. I have the Green Grocer, Lighthouse Island and an older train station to add to it soon. But ideally I do want to get into MOCing. I am only fresh into this again. Any Leogs I had as a child are long gone, so I don't have any sort of reserve of Lego pieces. Since I'm paying $40-200 a set, I have a hard time taking the sets I have apart. I'd rather just order new pieces and eventually build a stash. It's only been a few months, I have a long way to go. I am thinking about starting MOCing and ordering pieces to fill out the fire station and make it an enclosed building. That seems like an easy, manageable project to start off with. I am looking forward to engaging with this group, learning from and sharing with the members here. Hope this intro wasn't too long-winded or filled with too many links to images. Thanks for your time.

Oh yeah, I almost forgot to mention that I also want to make a waterfall coming down from the mountain out of translucent blue and clear round 2x2s, hence the name Hemlock FALLS.

Captain Braunsfeld · February 5, 2015

Welcome to Eurobricks - congratulations to your "Lego table". I wish I had one...

Hemlock Falls · February 5, 2015

Thank you. I wish I had known and considered more how the train can be arranged before I built the table. It's become very problematic trying to configure a way for the train to make curves, except in very limited ways because of the mountain and the narrowness of my daughter's leg of the table.