Weekend Getaway! Building The TFA Millenium Falcon!

Happy New Year, folks! Apologies for the short break right at the beginning of the year. You see, I've been busy these past few weeks because my sisters, Maine and Dior, who both live overseas, are home and the family and I have been spending as much time as we can with them. They'll be flying back to their respective countries on the first week of February so we have to make the most out of their vacation. We're running out of time! 

As you probably know from my previous entries, my sisters were responsible for getting me into Lego. We started out playing with Fabuland sets and eventually got into the various themes of Lego System back in the '90s. To kick-off my sisters' vacation, we went out of town, rented a neat house with a pool for a couple of days and decided to spend a good part of our 'staycation' building the Millenium Falcon from The Force Awakens.

The fastest hunk o' junk was kept hidden in our old house in Manila. It originally belonged to Maine, who sent it home last year so we could built it together. Just like the old days! I was told to keep my hands off the prize and man, it was pretty hard not to rip that huge box open. She even had it sealed and had our Mom guard it to make sure I'd keep my hands off it. Half a year's worth of waiting, man.

The Falcon has twelve bags inside. It also comes with your typical manual and a sticker sheet. 

Luckily, our temporary home was fit for building Lego sets. Aside from being well lit, it was pretty spacious and it also had the proper furniture for laying out all them bag o' bricks. Here's our workstation!

To keep things organized, we had a sorter, distributor and builder for each bag. We took turns switching between those roles to make sure everyone gets a chance in building the Falcon. By the way, there were four of us: me, my sisters and my niece Dallas, who's Dior's eldest kid and also a huge fan of Star Wars.

Me and Dallas

We also had a plan to keep the boys busy. It's their first foray into retro gaming so they immediately got hooked!

On with the build! The plan was simple really. Open a bag, sort the bricks, then build. Sorting the bricks really saved us a lot of time and it made us more efficient.

Sort, sort, sort!

Here's several snaps of the four of us in action! Building with other peeps especially with family, is really a breath of fresh air for me. I usually build sets on my own but I made an exception for this very special set.

Dallas and Maine

Dallas and Dior!

Here's our progress for each bag. Check 'em out! This iteration of the Falcon really has a lot of interesting building techniques and details. I actually prefer this over both UCS versions because of the interior's playability features. It offers more space to put minifigs which is very important for me. Though I would still love to own a UCS Falcon someday. hehe

It took us roughly 6 hours to complete the build. It was already dinner time at that point and we were all hungry and tired. I completely forgot to take pics of the awesome figs that came with this set as well as closer shots of the Falcon's details. Anyway, here's a quick look at it.

It was really cool building this set with family. It really brought back a lot of fun memories of playing Lego with my sisters. Though we all have separate lives now and live far from each other, we will always have this special bond which we will definitely continue to share with our kids. I love these guys and I'm really lucky to have them in my life. I highly recommend doing this with your loved ones, folks!

Dior, Maine, Dallas and my sub, Athan

Thanks for reading another entry here at Nothing But Brick, folks! I'll be posting important stuff regarding the ongoing #minifigme Challenge so stay tuned for that. Make sure to check the details of the contest here if you still haven't joined. Enjoy the rest of the weekend, folks! Till next entry!