Did I ever say I've been harbouring this secret plan to build a cathedral out of lego?
In actual size!
...
Ok, not actual size, but big enough that it consumes the centre of my room. Then I'd do a time lapse footage of me building it... Well, stop motion really. I'd put on a couple of bricks, step back, take a picture. That kind of thing.
You are amazing! Amazing! Splendiferous!
Want to know the details? Of course you do.
So, a standard 2x4 lego brick is 3.2cmx1.6cm. My guess is I can squeeze about 2.5mx1.5m of room to work with in my room. I could probably squeeze a bit more out of it if I liked, but sticking with that for the basic fudge.
If we use 2x4 bricks the base would be about 78 bricks long, and 47 bricks wide. We get 250 bricks for a block shaped building base. Let's say I want to build this thing 1 metre high. That'd take about 31 tiers of bricks. So that's 7750 bricks... For just the boring wall. I figre I could probably use some building bases and such to fill out most of the roof, but I'm still going to need more bricks, so then, let's call it 10,000 bricks.
On their website, they have
this offer of 650 bricks of various sizes for 30 dollars. To get about 10,000 I'd need to buy 11.1 of those. Shoving the price up a little (because you generally try to overestimate with these things), I get 350 dollars for a fudged up cost, add in some other expenses and we'll call it at least 400 dollars.
Now, my plan says that I don't go out and just buy all this. It's just the ultimate goal, I'd start out small, buy 2, maybe 3 of those brick sets, and build something on a smaller scale, get a feel for it. Who knows, maybe I won't need that much after all. It'll be a series of gradually larger cathedrals being built.
There's other details to this plan. I don't intend to leave the bricks their original colour. I'd spray paint them all shades of grey. Probably in a few varying tones, mix it up a little to give it a more realistic feel. I'd probably make some significantly larger or darker for the "highlights". I might also try flecking them with dark grey, maybe white, or black. Trying to give it that stone feel.
I also have some vague ideas about using lego people as statues, but I'm not so sure about that. I might have to see if that works out.
Of course... maybe this ultimate cathedral might not be ultimate enough. Maybe I'll have to commandeer the living room. And maybe if I outgrow that... There are plenty of places with large open spaces. Perhaps, eventually, I'll work my way up to ACTUALY SIZE MUHAHAHAHA!
Of course I actually doubt I'll even start this project at all. I think it's an interesting idea though.