How to turn LEGO 80113 Family Reunion Celebration into a modular building for just £25

This year’s LEGO 80113 Family Reunion Celebration is ripe for turning into a modular building, and here’s how you can do so for just £25…

One of two LEGO Chinese Traditional Festivals sets released this January, 80113 Family Reunion Celebration is a call-back to the very first Lunar New Year set, 80101 Chinese New Year’s Eve Dinner. But while the LEGO Group has used the modular building format for this series before in 80107 Spring Lantern Festival, it’s passed up the opportunity to do the same here.

The good news is that plenty of resourceful builders have already managed to transform it into a building that’s compatible with the likes of 10297 Boutique Hotel and 76218 Sanctum Sanctorum, including Rebrickable user Brick Artisan. And the best part is that you’ll only need to spend roughly £25 on top of the original set, bringing the total cost of this project to around £115.

That’s already way cheaper than any official LEGO modular building currently on the market, so we’re off to a great start. 80113 Family Reunion Celebration is available exclusively at LEGO.com for £89.99 / $129.99 / €99.99, and you’ll obviously need a copy to get going, but from there you’ll need to turn to BrickLink, Pick a Brick or your own parts collection for the extra 244 pieces.

Those include a 32×32-stud baseplate, which is standard for almost every LEGO modular building and can be sourced relatively easily through LEGO.com or other sets. (We borrowed the dark grey baseplate from 80107 Spring Lantern Festival.) The rest of the pieces mostly go towards tiling off the street, with a few extras to make sure the entire building is fully closed off on all four sides.

We sourced all the additional parts from BrickLink – a list is provided with the instructions through Rebrickable – and the total cost of our order, including shipping, came to around £20. (If you’re buying the baseplate on top of that, whether through LEGO.com or BrickLink, you’re going to be spending a little bit more.) Your mileage may vary though, depending on quantities of pieces available through local sellers.

Next up is really the most arduous part of this entire process (or maybe the most relaxing, if you’re so inclined) – cracking open every single bag in 80113 Family Reunion Celebration and sorting out all the pieces. You’re going to be pulling from multiple bags at once, so this is really the easiest way to make the process as smooth as possible, even if it is a bit laborious.

What’s not laborious is the assembly process, thanks to Brick Artisan’s straightforward and clear instructions. You really do feel like you’re putting together a LEGO modular building. It’s a bit simplified in places, constrained by the parts included in 80113 Family Reunion Celebration – the white panels allow for zero interior wall detailing, for example – but Brick Artisan has done well to maximise those pieces to minimise additional costs.

You can always swap in your own pieces to improve the aesthetics of the walls or floors too, but this is easily the most cost-effective way to turn 80113 Family Reunion Celebration into a modular building that doesn’t look out of place next to the rest of your street. And while there may be one or two internal compromises, the exterior is absolutely top notch. All the detail of the original set has been retained.

The finished model is not especially huge, but then not every building in a LEGO city needs to be a towering monument. From an aesthetic standpoint it slots in really nicely next to recent modular buildings, and it would probably look even better next to 80107 Spring Lantern Festival (if we hadn’t already cannibalised the baseplate for this build).

And for £115 all in (or thereabouts), it’s difficult to complain about the size – especially when the cheapest official LEGO modular buildings right now start at £199.99. As a bonus entry beyond this year’s 10326 Natural History Museum, you can’t really go wrong.

80113 Family Reunion Celebration is available to buy exclusively at LEGO.com for £89.99 / $129.99 / €99.99. You’ll find the instructions for this modular building conversion at Rebrickable.

This copy of 80113 Family Reunion Celebration was provided by the LEGO Group for the purposes of this feature. Check out our original review of the set here.

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