Lego Death Star

I got what I wanted for Christmas, the Lego Death Star.  I admit half of it is technically my son's but I've been talking about it for a long time.  I saved up some money for it but realized the best way to get it is to have part of it be for me.  It's the only way I could justify the purchase (at $500, wow...)

Because my son got many other Lego gifts this was my project to put together and it took me forever.  I timed it because I was curious how long it would take me to put together the 4016 piece beast.  It took over 1115 minutes to complete. Wow, is that right?  So the second time I did the math it came up at 960 minutes.  Ok adding it up the third time I got 1055 minutes (I'm watching Gabriel Iglesias after 2300 on about 5 hours of sleep while attempting to do math, obviously it's not working).  So it takes me somewhere in the ballpark of 960 minutes at 1115 minutes (and maybe a little longer, I'm distracted the entire time watching Frozen Planet, Blue Planet, True Blood if the kids aren't around, helping the boy put his Legos together when he's stuck which isn't very frequently, etc).

WOOHOO! Lego Alderaan beware!

So opening the box was very exciting for me, of all the Star Wars toys I owned growing up (original toys here back in the early 80s) I never had a Death Star.  I dump out the box and there are 3 smaller boxes in the giant box along with several bags and a 320 page spiral bound book of instructions.

Whoa...Alderaan may have to wait a while...Let's hope Jyn doesn't show up

This jumbled mess came out of the box.  I quickly realized this was going to need a bit of organization.  If you've ever put large Lego sets together you know they come with numbered bags to be opened at a certain time in the instructions. (Side note, my niece didn't know this, opened 4 bags worth of Legos and color coordinated them on a different set, took me forever to find everything).

An organized plan, just how the Emperor wanted.

So after the organizing I realize that yes there are numbered bags but as you can (hopefully) see in this picture there are multiple bags per number.  Instead of one bag #1 there are 3 bags. #2 has 5 bags to go with it, #3 has 3 and it goes on and on with 2 bags without numbers on them.  When you open these bags there are even smaller bags inside with the extremely small pieces (the one piece, etc).  Now you're starting to understand a bit why it took me some time to finish.

This is the cutest Dianoga ever! Watch out Luke!

*Pew, Pew, Pew*

I was going to show the completed stages as I finished the Death Star but I decided to cut to the completed project.  I have no clue how to format with this many pictures so hopefully it's not too confusing.  They show the different sections of the Death Star, many moving parts (closing walls in the Trash compactor, trap door in the prisoner cell that drops to the trash compactor, etc).  I look forward to doing more Lego Star Wars projects in the future.  Maybe Boba Fett's ship, the Slave One (hint, hint).