Lepin 15008 Not Lego Green Grocer Set Review - Part Three

Hello, if you've just joined us, this post is about building the third floor of the Lego knockoff Lepin 15008 Green Grocer modular building.  I take pictures of the sets as I build them, so you can see what the Lepin build and brick quality is like.  In the above picture, I have just finished the third floor base.

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The Green Grocer third floor walls and windows are now in place.  I like the neat hot water radiator design under the rear window.  I also put in the railings for the staircase.

This is the rear view and you can see there's the makings of the fire escape exit.

Just pointing out the nice pendulum clock.  That and the rug is all the furnishings you get on the third floor.  Pretty sparse layout.

I put the staircase in and the upper window elements.  The front facade is starting to match the design scheme of the second floor now.

Here's the completed front with bay window.

A final look at the third floor interior.

I've attached the sloping roof tiles now.

This is how the structures look from the inside.

And with that, I have positioned the third floor onto the rest of the Green Grocer building.

Just some views.  Front corner elevation.

Rear corner elevation.

This is the back of the Green Grocer building.  As I mentioned in my previous post, the black windows are my own substitution, and the garbage bin is an addition from the Lepin Parisian Restaurant set.

This picture gives you a good look at the fire escape and how it all fits together between the second and third floors.

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The Rooftop

This is the formation of the Green Grocer rooftop.

Another view of it.

Here's how the rooftop looks as per the original design.  It has doorway into the third floor staircase and it opens up onto a small terrace.  Take a good look at this picture now, because then you will see what is to come later.

This is the front of the roof top.

The completed rooftop with all the embellishments including railings and chimney stack.

Here is the rooftop with the furnished terrace.  There's what appears to be a BBQ with open lid, and a small seating area with chairs and umbrella.  The terrace is adorned with flowers boxes also.  At this point, the rooftop is still the original design, but if you know me, I never leave things alone.

Do you notice anything different between this picture and the previous one?  I mean besides the presence of the minifigure.

Not sure?  Ok, how about this side view, maybe now you will notice the change.  It's all very subtle but it was a challenge to do.

Ok, if you still don't know, I raised the height of the roofline by several bricks and added a canopy over the door opening.

What I like about the taller roofline is that it gives a better visual appearance, especially the proper sense of scale when a minifigure is present.

The bay window turret required that I turn the rear angle plates around to accommodate the new slope of the rooftop.

The Lepin Green Grocer with rooftop modification is all done.

Just one more picture before we go.

Finally, here's the Lepin Green Grocer in it's new home next to the Lepin Town Hall.

That's it, bye and thanks for looking!

Oh wait,  in case you were wondering whatever happened with my Aliexpress dispute regarding the missing baseplate and other bricks I talked about in my first Green Grocer post, Aliexpress ruled in my favour and I got a refund of 50% back. Woohoo!

If you want to see my previous posts about the Lepin Green Grocer you can find them here and here.

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Lepin 15008 Not Lego Green Grocer Set Review - Part Two

This is part two of my Lepin Green Grocer modular review at its-not-lego.blogspot.com.  I'll be documenting the construction of the second floor of the Lepin set 15008.   This should be a relatively quick post, so I hope you have time to look at the pictures.   In the above picture, we are on step 10 and have added the beginnings of a fireplace and a fire escape.  I'm not impressed with the clugy looking fire escape hand rails, is there no way to make a better looking fire escape?

On step 20 now, we have the walls halfway bricked in with sand green bricks and a railing has been added to the interior stairwell. 

Here's how the fireplace looks now.  The dark red bricks will be the second floor curtains.

This is the rear of the second floor.    See those small white windows?  I will be replacing them with different black ones.  I do this, because most times people won't see the back of my buildings, and because I am saving the white windows for future mods.  Only diehard modular fans will notice the difference in some of the parts I substitute.

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Here's another look at the fire escape.

More progress has been made after step 30.  The staircase going to the third floor is in and so the small white cat is making himself at home.  All the windows are installed including the bay window and the large picture windows on the front.  Those curtains look so real.   Front balcony railings added to the front too.

The small black windows are in.  Do you prefer the original white ones or the new black ones I've used?  The fire escape has been extended upwards by another flight.

Second floor completed!  

Close up look at the window details

Looking at the back now.

Unlike the first floor, the second floor of the Green Grocer is quite sparse.  It only has a fireplace and some drapes.  I'll have to add some furnishings in the future.

Here is the second floor of the Green Grocer set onto the first floor. 

Side view.

Back view.

The little guy seems to have found his baseball cap now.

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That's it for the now.  Thanks for looking at the Lepin Green Grocer second floor pictures.  The roof section will be looked at in part three.

Lepin 15008 Not Lego Green Grocer Set Review - Part One

The Lepin Green Grocer 15008 is my sixth bootleg Lego modular building.  It is a knock-off of Lego's Green Grocer  modular set 10185.  I wish I could say that the building process was as smooth as the previous five buildings, which include the Cafe Corner, Fire Brigade, Town Hall, Parisian Cafe and the Detective's Office.

However, as soon as I opened my large package of brick parts, I knew something was wrong.  The Green Grocer base plate is supposed to consist of two pieces of 16x32 thin green tile, however I only received one tile with my building set.  I raised a dispute right away with the seller on Aliexpress.

Fortunately, I happened to have an extra 32x32 thick baseplate in my brick parts stash, so I was able to start building my Lepin Green Grocer without much delay.  Here's my visual record of building the Lepin Green Grocer modular.  As with my previous posts, I will take pictures of the progress after each 10 steps or so.  I will be using the Lepin instruction manual for reference.  

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Step 10

When you get a Lepin modular, you get a big package of brick parts.  The big package is made up of smaller bags containing similar sized parts.  Each parts bag may or may not contain a number.  Usually there are 40 or 50 bags of parts that make up a modular building.   Before opening any parts bag, I will typically sort my parts bags in numerical order to see if I'm missing anything.  In this particular instance, I noticed one of the bags containing sand green 1x8 bricks had been ripped opened.  Also I received a duplicate bag of 1x6 gray bricks.  So at this point, I'm unsure if my Green Grocer will have all the parts, but I figure I will address any deficiencies when I get to it.  For this Lepin Green Grocer set there is supposed to be 2462 pieces.

Having replaced the missing base plate with my own, here's the Green Grocer floor for the first level all tiled in at step 10.  I like the tan and light yellow floor tile.  I should point out that the Lepin modulars use a thicker base plate than Lego does.  Since I don't have any of the original Lego modulars to integrate with, I've been using the Lepin supplied thicker base plates instead of reverting to the thinner baseplates.  I was lucky that I bought the thicker green 32x32 baseplate about a month earlier with plans to replace the two base plates of the Lepin Cafe Corner with just one.  Now, I will just keep the Cafe Corner the way it is as use this new baseplate for the Green Grocer instead.

Step 20.

Moving along to step 20, I've put together the first four minifigures.  There's a lady who looks after the store, a young boy scout, another lady and a man with top hat.  Sorry guy, but the top hat has to go.

The first floor walls are in place and some of the merchandise for the store shelves has been put on display.  There's a large bank of mailboxes and the stair well to the second floor is starting to take shape.

A quick rotation of the base and we can see the rear of the Green Grocer's first floor.

Some pictures of the side view.

Step 30

I would say the first floor of the Green Grocer is at about 70% completion. I didn't put any of the fruits or vegetables into their bins yet, but at this early stage, I just end up losing them because the pieces are so small.   See those two holes in the archway? I make them disappear later in step 40.

I like the cooler at the back of the shop.  In fact I liked it so much, I made a copy of it for my Hsanhe Seven Eleven modular upgrade.

Here's the side view of how things look after step 30.  Still needs doors and windows to be installed.

Another view from overhead.  We got the door into the staircase put in.

Here's the back side of the first floor, step 30.  Some light fixtures have been added here.

And I couldn't find the little guys cap yet, hopefully it will show up soon.

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Step 40

Doors and windows have now been put into place on the first floor.

Here's a closer look.

 Here's how things look around back.  I moved my dumpster here from the Lepin Parisian Restaurant set.  It was taking up too much room at the back of that set.

When it came time to complete my staircase, I found that I was missing all of the 2x4 gray bricks.  Instead I think they gave me an extra bag of 1x6 bricks by mistake.  Luckily the 2x4 grays are a common brick for me, so I managed to continue the first floor without any further problems.

More storage bins that I need to fill up later.

Despite numerous tries, I could not get the stupid sextant part of the light fixture to stay in place with the holes in the archway.  They kept falling out so in my frustration, I decided to dispense with them altogether.  So what you see in the picture is how the light fixtures look like now.

Step 47

Here's the completed first floor staircase with finishing tiles.

The blue and white canopy has been installed above the front windows.  Street lamp and fire hydrant have been added too.

The lady minifigure gets a baby carriage, but sadly no baby minifigure. I really was hoping for one.  I still haven't found the red baseball cap for the young boy minifigure. Hopefully it will show up, when I build the second floor of the Lepin Green Grocer.

Here's a summary of my Lepin Green Grocer changes.  There will be more changes later as I continue the build.
- replaced missing 16x32 base plate with larger 32x32 thick baseplate
- replaced missing 2x4 gray blocks for staircase
- did not install light fixture details on either side of front archway
- added dumpster from Parisian Restaurant set

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That's it for now, hope you have enjoyed the pictures of the Lepin Green Grocer modular this far.  I will post the second floor build pictures soon.