Lego Friends Town Help

[jimim]

First I apologize if this is the wrong area for this thread. I'm very very new to this and it is kinda overwhelming. My daughter and myself want to make a city/town out of the various lego friends buildings she has. I am looking for some guidance on the best route to fit everything together. I want to use bases that have the streets already bart of the base. we want to make sidewalks out of smooth flat bricks like most of you all do for the modulars but this is where we get stuck. all the friends buildings are different size base plates. how do i integrate all of them to put down sidewalks and various elements we want to add.

1. do i use the street bases and add another large building base and place the lego friends building right on them with their factory bases?

2. remove them from their bases and build them onto new flat bases that are all the same?

3. bump them up against street bases since they are going to get covered by smooth flat bricks anyway? (didn't know if this was the smart move cause they wouldn't hold together well)

what do you guys do? the plan was to have a building on each side of the street and to maybe make a park area at the end of a street and place buildings around the park.

i just have no idea where to start. i have been looking at pictures of diff city modular builds but i know they all fit together and it looks like they are just bumped up against street base plates.

so sorry if my terminology is wrong and i hope you all understand what i mean.

thanks so much for the help!

the work i have seen throughout these forums is just jaw dropping. i can't even express how impressive!

jim

[TomKraut]

Well, since I don't have an area large enough to build a real layout, I haven't done this myself (oh, to have a child's bedroom floor to play on again... and joints young enough to actually play on the floor ), but here is what I would do:

1. Because the current roads are rather dark and don't go well with the Friends colour scheme, I would first brighten them up a little by placing 1x2 tiles as curb stones, maybe in azure, magenta, pink or lavender. Then add light grey 2x2 tiles as the sidewalk until they extend over the edge of the roadplate.

2. Add another baseplate connected via the overlapping sidewalk, preferably in tan.

3. Remove the bases from the buildings and build up the outline of the walls with 1-wide plates. Extend the sidewalk to the front of the building, because most Friends stores etc. have an extending or recessed entrance.

4. Build a new interior floor from colourful tiles. You can use mosaic techniques to create really wonderful floors this way.

5. Place the buildings onto the wall outline.

Be aware that this may cost a lot of money in tiles and baseplates, and you will have to get the tiles from the pick-a-brick section in the Lego Online Store or from Bricklink. The same goes for the 1-wide plates you will need to heighten the walls. You can also visit a Lego Store if there is one near you and check out the pick-a-brick wall for tiles and plates, however it is rather unlikely that you will find many useful pieces there. If you find any they will be very cheap by comparison, so it might be worth checking out.

Cheers

TomKraut

[jimim]

Well, since I don't have an area large enough to build a real layout, I haven't done this myself (oh, to have a child's bedroom floor to play on again... and joints young enough to actually play on the floor ), but here is what I would do:

1. Because the current roads are rather dark and don't go well with the Friends colour scheme, I would first brighten them up a little by placing 1x2 tiles as curb stones, maybe in azure, magenta, pink or lavender. Then add light grey 2x2 tiles as the sidewalk until they extend over the edge of the roadplate.

2. Add another baseplate connected via the overlapping sidewalk, preferably in tan.

3. Remove the bases from the buildings and build up the outline of the walls with 1-wide plates. Extend the sidewalk to the front of the building, because most Friends stores etc. have an extending or recessed entrance.

4. Build a new interior floor from colourful tiles. You can use mosaic techniques to create really wonderful floors this way.

5. Place the buildings onto the wall outline.

Be aware that this may cost a lot of money in tiles and baseplates, and you will have to get the tiles from the pick-a-brick section in the Lego Online Store or from Bricklink. The same goes for the 1-wide plates you will need to heighten the walls. You can also visit a Lego Store if there is one near you and check out the pick-a-brick wall for tiles and plates, however it is rather unlikely that you will find many useful pieces there. If you find any they will be very cheap by comparison, so it might be worth checking out.

Cheers

TomKraut

Very cool. . . ok here are my 2 questions.

1. when i extend the 2x2 over the edge it will be by 1 only. will that hold everything together well enough? that was what i was worried about.

2. you lost me on 3. i know i'm going to remove the buildings from the factory bases but i don't know what you mean by the outline to build them up with 1-wide plates? do you mean how they make the second floor removable from the first floor so they can be removed easier for play?

i'm sorry. that was the only thing i got lost on.

Thanks so much for the help! awesome ideas!

i found some nice street benches and lights for the roads. i also found a few smaller trees i like, but my daughter wants some of those larger trees for the park that we see, but haven't found any instructions for those yet.

jim

[TomKraut]

The overlap of 1 should be enough as long as you don't pick the whole thing up. You could also use some 2x4 tiles, especially where you have four baseplates joining each other.

What I meant was, you should recreate the outer shape of the buildings on the baseplates with 1-wide plates. This makes it easier to see where the interior floors will be and it raises the ground on which the walls will stand by the same amount as the tiles for the sidewalk. You could also use tiles and 1x1 plates in certain places to make the buildings easier to remove.

Oh, and as for the trees, there is a pinned thread in the Historic forum with some amazing guides. This is however really advanced stuff that I haven't dared to try myself yet...

[jimim]

The overlap of 1 should be enough as long as you don't pick the whole thing up. You could also use some 2x4 tiles, especially where you have four baseplates joining each other.

What I meant was, you should recreate the outer shape of the buildings on the baseplates with 1-wide plates. This makes it easier to see where the interior floors will be and it raises the ground on which the walls will stand by the same amount as the tiles for the sidewalk. You could also use tiles and 1x1 plates in certain places to make the buildings easier to remove.

Oh, and as for the trees, there is a pinned thread in the Historic forum with some amazing guides. This is however really advanced stuff that I haven't dared to try myself yet...

ok i got you. i forgot it will be lower now. some won't be cause they have some sidewalk already in place. friends sets also love the round walls with windows so i'm going to have some issues with doing a 1- wide higher outline of the building. they don't make rounded tiles do they?

this should be interesting. i guess i'll keep everything on their bases and lay it out for now to see how many bases i actually need.

quick question where is a good place on the net to buy the large sand or green colored bases. cheaper than lego that is? i know i can go on amazon but should i be looking at brick link for these?

thanks again!

jim

[jimim]

Ok I know you guys that build these amazing huge city displays really don't want to be talking about friends city setups but I have a 6 year old girl and that's where we are at right now in our lego journey.

I am doing a city square setup. No roads. I'm facing the buildings towards each other. They are separated by large flower planters that have a tree built in the center of each planter. There are 5. I'm thinking of doing the planters in the sand color 2x2's wit the brick profile and then cap them in a different color. They are each separated by a 14 block wide opening which will have 2 benches and a lamp post . I have really nice balance going right now. My daughter decided she wants the sidewalks 6 wide. We are using 1x4 flat tiles for the edges and the center of the sidewalk will be 2 2x2 flats. so 6 wide total. light grey edge and dark grey middle. I was going to do the edge in a friend's color but I'm trying to push her towards the regular city colors cause as she gets older i'm assuming she will look more towards the creator buildings. She is already begging for the new one. Ok here are my 2 problems. . .

1. How do I bump the friends buildings to the sidewalk. They are not square. Friends loves to use curved windows and a lot of in and out wit the foundation. Luckily all the buildings we have are the same depth. 16 brick. If I bump them I will have curves with sections I can't fill in nicely with flat tiles. So my thought was a lot of outdoor seating and a lot of flowers to hide the areas I can't cover with tiles cause of the curves. I would love some ideas on how to make the transition seamless as possible. should i use the low profile fences to touch up against my sidewalks and the fill to the building with flowers?

2. Also I can't really bump the buildings against each other cause they are open on the side to play and have windows and such. I have 6 brick spaces between them now. I have zero ideas for what to be to tie the buildings together. some I was just going to tile as sidewalks to the back of the stores. i thought about dumpster/ trash areas for some. flowers for others. didn't know how wide i should make them or if you all had some different ideas. i fell like when i don't know what to do with something i just say "fill it with flowers. :)

I'm so new to this and just want to try and make our first setup cool but also easy for her to play with. having separation between buildings will make it nice for her to play. i also don't want waste a bunch of money. i know i'm going to have a lot sunk into our first purchase just to do the trees/ planters/sidewalks and such.

thanks so much!

jim

[Rick]

Ok I know you guys that build these amazing huge city displays really don't want to be talking about friends city setups but I have a 6 year old girl and that's where we are at right now in our lego journey.

I have added your post to your previous thread about this topic.

[jimim]

I think my 2 threads got combined. I should have posted in this one but I didn't think about it.

But I think your post got deleted?

thanks,

jim

[Rick]

I didn't delete anything, I only merged threads. Post number 6 was originally your second thread.

[jimim]

Sorry Rick my bad I didn't read your post correct. I didn't realize it was above. My bad! I'm gonna go back now and read