Custom LEGO MOC Gas Station, Car Wash, and Apartment Building!

It's been quite awhile since I've posted here at Playing with Bricks.  Truth be told, I haven't done much with my LEGO bricks over the past several weeks/months but that changed recently with me suddenly getting the urge to create a new custom building for my LEGO City.  

I ended up building a Service Station (gas station, convenience store, and car wash) on the ground level with an apartment building on the upper two levels.  A quick glance at my building will probably be all you need to pick out bits and pieces from a few official LEGO sets.  More specifically, I kept the car wash sign from set #60362:  Car Wash and I kept the rollers from that set.  

The rest of the car wash portion is a full recoloring to the Octan colors plus I made the car wash building much larger.

I also used some of the design elements from set #60132:  Service Station.  

In particular, I used a similar design of the angled sign as well as a similar rooftop for over the gas pump.  I incorporated the electric charging station into my build as well.  

Finally, I also took some direct inspiration from set #31065:  Park Street Townhouse.  More specifically, from one of the alternate builds of that 3-in-1 Creator set.

You can probably make out the fact that I (mostly) kept the greenhouse in tact from the original set.  I did have to switch things around to make it work for my model but it's basically the same design as the original source material.  

While I'm happy with my model, I'd say that the creation really shines* when you turn the lights off in the room.  *pun intended  That's right, I wired the building with lights which really makes the entire thing pop!  

Long time readers will know that I often make a scene of various LEGO sets for my son to play with - well, I did the same thing with my model as the centerpiece of his small LEGO city.  Here's a view at night with the lights shining bright:

The lights definitely make the model feel way more alive and real.  Now that I've built one model with lights, both my wife and son told me any future builds must also have a light component to them!  Here's a few more photos that I snapped:

The grill is probably my favorite mini build I did - might add a light brick to it in the future!

Overall, this particular build was tricky to wire with lights because I wanted to make sure the building was still suitable for play for my son.  That meant that each floor of the apartment had to come apart (and thus I couldn't add lights and wires to any part of the building that was removable).  In the end, I managed to get light to all but the top floor of the apartment - and I think it looks pretty good for a beginner's attempt at lighting a custom LEGO build!

That does it for my latest creation.  Hopefully, I'll get another post here at Playing with Bricks before the year is up...it's been awhile but I haven't forgotten (or forsaken) the blog quite yet!