Has anyone tried MOCing your own house?

[Modelmaker]

For a while now i've been thinking of doing my house in minifig scale but I've come across a few problems.

I tried using that LDD thing but it is annoyingly slow. But in laying out the foundations it turns out the house will be 34 studs wide and and 39 studs deep by 24 rows high just to keep the proportions right. This makes it a lot bigger than the grand emporium and most of the other modulars. Now I do live in a house that is nearly 100 years old and the ground floor has high ceilings but there is no way it should be bigger than any of the modulars. My other problem is there is no matching Lego interior doors or any even close and for some of the windows i will have to use vintage parts. Because I make models for a living it is possible I can mod existing doors to match and also make some other details that can't be made in official Lego parts but i don't want to really have to do that i want to stick to pure Lego. But my OCD, bet into my brain, modelmaking ways, are fighting my new re-found Lego making ways.

If you built your own house what kind of compromises did you have to make?

And do you have any pictures of the real version and the Lego version?

[Zerobricks]

Thats a good idea, but not everyone lives in a house

[Dhivael]

I've seen a few, and I've got my own rolling around the MOC hopper-- trying to scale mine to fit in with the modular/creator series while preserving the "feel" of the actual building. Mostly at this point i just need to order more parts... once i have some disposable income again...

[ultron32]

i've considered attempting it. It would be a cool centerpiece for any Lego fan.

[TheLegoDr]

I've considered doing it. I actually used LDD (back in 2010!) to build a house we were looking at buying. It was this beautiful tudor style with high vaulted ceilings and arches in the living room. A ginormous fireplace. It had a lot of neat features. Anyway, I had a good chunk built in LDD, then my computer quit working AND we ended up not buying it anyway, so that is lost.

But with our new house. I've considered doing it again, although I don't have a computer or time to use LDD.

I'd assume compromises would depend on scale. I probably wouldn't want it too large, for the sake of displaying it. So maybe I'd need it to fit on a 48x48 baseplate with some yard exposed. I guess the main compromise would be the front picture window. It is probably 6 feet tall and 10 feet wide. It was custom built for the house originally back in the '40s. There would be no LEGO trans pieces to occupy that size without having seams from trans bricks or trans panels.

[Modelmaker]

I've been looking at it again and i think the main problem is the 4 wide doors on the interior. If i make the interior that's what makes it so big. On my street there are many houses almost identical to the house in the petshop set but if i were to try and copy one of them in mini fig scale including the interior the model would be at least 4 times the size of the pet shop house. there has to be some compression going on with the modulars. I wasn't even considering adding in the front and back yards because they would push the model to 130 studs deep. I have the same problem with large front bay windows but there is also some stained glass going on so that would have to be printed. I guess if i go ahead and build it with the detail i want it would have to be kept apart from my modulars and i will have to mod some pieces using my model making skills, things like picture and dado rails cant be done in lego, and there is a large set of sliding doors that separate the dining room from the drawing room that would need to be about a half a stud wide to slide into the walls.

[eurotrash]

Try this thread http://www.eurobricks.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=94542 and this one http://www.eurobricks.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=89706

[Pop Bumper Pete]

I could do it

but I would do the house as it was 100 years ago (lots more fireplaces)

[Modelmaker]

Try this thread http://www.eurobrick...showtopic=94542 and this one http://www.eurobrick...showtopic=89706

They are some good links, cheers, but they do prove what i was thinking. Both of those MOCs are bigger than the modulars.

I got almost the first floor finished in that LDD program but i gave up because it's so slow and i can't do things in it that i want to try so moved to using real bricks because it's just so much quicker. I managed to squeeze the house down to 28 studs wide and 34 deep and it wasn't to bad looking until i got to the second floor and the bedrooms are just too small so I'm thinking I'll have to widen it again. So i stopped building will i think about what to do. Also by using my real bricks i have a better idea about what i have and what i need to complete the build. I'll post pics of the first attempt later if anyones interested in seeing them.

Edited August 24, 2014 by Modelmaker

[ER0L]

I have been thinking about that - would be no problem since the house I'm living in (not my own, alas) already looks like a modular building.

there has to be some compression going on with the modulars.

I guess this is the right point. You may build any building in any scale, but of course there's a loss of realism when shrinking the building since the usable parts stay the same - probably the main difference between building with Lego and the usual model building.

.

Thus my advice would be not to think about the details in the first place but of the measurements and proportions of the whole thing. A detail you don't manage to reproduce (which is not only a question of available parts but also of building experience) may be just omitted - and probably nobody cares about it. Lego building always means stylizing things, not to reproduce them as completely realistic models.

[Ophrys]

Yes I have MOCed my vacation home... But only in LDD, I have not yet all the parts.

Pictures soon.

[Legogal]

If your home has many details, this is incredibly hard to do in LEGO because the pieces are so limited. Sixteen years ago when we were designing our home (because all the architects around here were too busy at the time to do it for us,) we ended up building a LEGO version of the Frank Lloyd Wright inspired design we wanted. I took this model to several contractors to see if they would be interested enough to give us a quote. Most just laughed at my face. And our subdivision's homeowner architectural committee voted down the design as being to modern to fit in here. So we dumped that design and came up with another more traditional one after many sessions of scouring homebuilding magazines in B&n and Borders, which was our second living room at the time.

I have not built our home in LEGO yet, but hope to one day. Scale does not bother me. It will be as large as is required to make it look like our home and have decent interiors. It will not sit next to the Modulars because they are on a narrow shelf. And our LEGO home will have a decent front and back yard because that is what makes our delightful home even greater. And we built the entire yard with six enormous curved retaining walls of block by hand and wheelbarrow. Why spend a lot of time and effort building your home if you can't use a scale that allows you to show some details? Looking forward to this project after we have completed our renovations and moved the LEGO room to a larger space without windows... back downstairs. Ugh. It seems a shame to totally cover windows with gorgeous views because there are LEGO that will fade in a room.

Good luck with building your own homes/ apartments/condos/tents/RV's or whatever. I have lived in all of those and look forward to building them as well.

[Bricknblue]

Years ago I did the front of my parent's house, it's very simple house. But I did it in LEGO Town style, three walls, only the front.

[talos]

I never seriously considered building my house. It is a low, wide, single story 'ranch' style. It would look like one enormous roof if I did it in Lego...I prefer building fantasy buildings, like my Ideas MOC house. :-)

[fred67]

Yes... LEGO is expensive, and given the size of minifigures, using a "one stud = <some measurement>" guideline makes making a "real" home very difficult.

We see this modulars... the inside of the Grand Emporium would, in real life, be one of the smallest stores you'd probably visit.

What's going on here, and in just about every theme, is that to keep sets a reasonable size, TLG and most MOCers use "minifigure illusion scale." That is, you home would look plausibly big enough, perhaps, for you figure... but it would be nowhere near the "right" size. Let's face it, a honest minifigure scale castle, for example, could fill an entire room... and yet they somehow squeeze it into maybe 15x15 inches or so.

Even the cars... you want to seat three across, like even a compact car can do in the backseat? Your LEGO car would have to be enormous to do that.

I never seriously considered building my house. It is a low, wide, single story 'ranch' style. It would look like one enormous roof if I did it in Lego...I prefer building fantasy buildings, like my Ideas MOC house. :-)

I have, but concluded I could make an approximation, but not something accurately scaled with all the rooms.

Edited August 25, 2014 by fred67

[Modelmaker]

Well here is the squashed down version of my ground floor. This is just the first draft to see how it looks in brick form so none of the colours are right and the front baywindows are missing, but it gives me a good idea of what parts i need to bricklink (some ordered already)

And with the partly done second floor..

Another problem with the house is it is built on a hill so in reality there is no steps down from the back door but 2 steps down from the front.

From this quick mock up i can see i have squashed it to far sideways and it really needs to be at least 6 studs wider.

I have ordered plain trans clear 4x6 window glass from bricklink and will alter them to work as the interior doors and one for the front door. But they will be the only altered parts i'll be using in this MOC (I think)

[TWO2SEVEN]

I considered building my apartment and maybe making a few copies of it. One thing I have learned from building the Petshop townhouse and the Creator Family House is that things need to be scaled down and simplified. As others have mentioned, if I used the proper scale for even my apartment it would be way too big to fit in to a Modular based city. I may try it soon in LDD and see what it would cost to put together.

[smoothbit]

Try this thread http://www.eurobricks.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=94542 and this one http://www.eurobricks.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=89706

Thanks for the mention, eurotrash.

They are some good links, cheers, but they do prove what i was thinking. Both of those MOCs are bigger than the modulars.

I've yet to update my thread with more details as intended, but in response to your concern of building larger than the official Modulars:

Because I wanted a detailed interior, I made my initial model 16x48 instead of 16x32. I also built all the way to the back of the baseplate, rather than leave ~8 studs free for a back path. I also built each floor 8 bricks high to accomodate windows above the doors.

I mention this because, if I wanted to build a version that would both look like my house and yet also be the proper 16x32, and not tower above the other buildings, removing the interiors and windows would achieve both of those.

However, I did build at 16x48 (and then 16x96) with the idea that it can still fit in among the other Modulars, so long as it's part of a larger block, as in these photos:

Anyway, the other big compromise I made was squashing the rooms to be less deep than the original floor plan:

The core of the house is to scale, the stairways and bathrooms, but the rooms themselves are maybe 2/3 as deep as they should be. This meant I could not fit in as much furniture as I remembered, but when I started I didn't want to build at 16x64 as I considered that far too large. Maybe for the next version…

Also, LDraw is a much faster alternative to LEGO Digital Designer, I can recommend Bricksmith if you have a Mac.

Finally, what you've built so far looks very good, I look forward to seeing how your project develops.

Edited August 28, 2014 by smoothbit

[Modelmaker]

Cheers Smoothbit.

I really liked your MOC, i used to have friend that lived in a very similar house to the one you built so i know the type of architecture and how big it is in real life and there is no way it should be larger than the cinema or the grand emporium . The problem is my normal (boring) day job is as an architectural model maker and I'm finding it hard to deal with this weird squashed Lego scale. From the pics you posted of your real house I can build a true to scale model (not in Lego) of it in any scale but my brain can't make it fit with the modular stuff and still have all the interior details. I guess the main problem with the Lego system Is they using an unnatural ratio of 1 is to 1.8 rather than the golden ratio of 1.6 ( google "golden ratio" for an explanation) the Lego new buildings are just not natural but the vintage lego parts are at the 1.6 ratio. I've already squashed my house as much as i could and it just looks wrong in my eyes so i'm going to have to undo the squashiness and build it to the right proportions just to make it look right in my eyes, It will just have to be displayed separate from the modular stuff. I'm just waiting for my next brick link order to arrive so i can start on version 2 of the build. At the moment i have no pictures of the real house but i will take pictures soon so then maybe you can see how far of the current proportions are.

Having said all that i really have to congratulate the Lego designers for designing such good looking buildings in such a weird scale or ratio, i really have no idea how they made such large looking buildings so small.

[alanyuppie]

I lived in a townhouse and once bought Creator Townhouse at clearanced price in hope to MOC a version of it. But I changed my mind as it will expose the floorplan to potential opportunist with bad intentions out there. I sold the LEGO Townhouse MISB thereafter. regretful till now since it can fetch a good price since its retired.

[Chills]

Yep, I started working on the LDD design of my house about a year after I bought it. Then I started actually remodeling my house myself (putting in hardwood floors, built-in bookshelves, new baseboards, lights, etc) so the LDD project has fallen by the wayside. However, I'm nearing the end of my project list so I think I'll be starting up the MOC of my house this winter.

[TheBear]

This is an interesting topic. The issue of scale is tricky. I have recently started a few buildings and used the size of the available door and window frames as a starting point for the size of the building. I also want the building to look roughly to scale with a minifigure but consider them to be slightly shorter than a human. I found that my buildings were coming out at a slightly bigger scale than the modulars. This is not surprising as the modulars have been scaled down to meet a certain budget. Although it is cool to build things that fit in with the official sets we don't need to be constrained by that, so I would rather scale my official sets up a bit rather than force all my MOCs to fit to that scale.

I share your pain with the lack of available parts. I really wish there were a few more window and door frame options.

[smoothbit]

The problem is my normal (boring) day job is as an architectural model maker and I'm finding it hard to deal with this weird squashed Lego scale.

Coming at it from the angle of having built many LEGO houses as a child, and then later having built the Modulars, I think I had it easier; I was thinking in terms of LEGO scale first.

…I also want the building to look roughly to scale with a minifigure but consider them to be slightly shorter than a human.

Shorter than human… or maybe the height of a child? I usually consider minifigures adults, but because this is my childhood home, they can totally be me and my siblings instead, I just need to use some Woody limbs for my parents.

[Aanchir]

I've tried on LEGO Digital Designer, but since I started with my bedroom the proportions quickly became a bit ridiculous. Around 60 studs wide or something. I should try again sometime, this time aiming for reduced detail and a more reasonable scale.

[Ben C]

Ive debated building the farm, but then my MOC would be about 10,000 by 6,000 studs.. The barn would need a 48x60 baseplate to be accurate..