'LEGO Creator Expert' 10220 Volkswagen T1 Camper Van - build tips and photos

• Don't rush it. Yes, you hear of people who completed a Creator Expert kit in a weekend, but it's far better to give it 30 minutes or so a day, enjoying it more and spinning out the anticipation of the finishing line. I built mine over two months, though three weeks of this was waiting for a missing part (see below).
   
  
• Creator Expert kits are supplied with pieces in unnumbered bags. In other words, you've no idea which bag any parts needed for each page are in. I've seen some people advocate emptying everything into one huge pile and then spending three or four hours sorting the pieces by type, to make finding things easier. In fact, I strongly think you can save yourself those hours by emptying each bag into its own little pile around your central work space. The pieces in each pile seem random at first, but there ARE links and you'll be surprised how often you look for piece A and then find piece B, also needed for that page's step, right beside it. Plus your memory will gradually remember where pieces are, it'll become second nature to 'go for the second pile from the left when you need "1x1x1 plain red"', and so on. Trust your eyes, trust your brain, trust your fingers...
   
  
• When you suspect, numerous times during a build, that a brick or part is missing, note that in almost every case, the part IS there, you just have to find it. Which sounds a bit obvious, but it's true. Take a walk, brush the parts over with your fingers, look from a different angle - you will find it eventually (though see point 5 below!) And, of course, the further you get with the build, the fewer parts there are around the model, so the easier it becomes to find each piece!
   
  
• Make sure your build space is inaccessible to small children, pets and helpful cleaners! LEGO supplies the exact number of parts* and on such a complicated build you can't really afford to lose a single part.
   
  
• As a corollary to the tip above, if you do genuinely believe a part or two got lost (a four-wide window/wall piece was missing from my camper) then LEGO offers a free brick replacement service. It takes a couple of weeks though, so this is a last resort! If you're in a hurry and desperately need a part and it's not too model-specific, then you can of course buy LEGO bricks in hundreds of places. In fact, you may even have a box of assorted bricks and parts around the house - raid your kid's toy box?(!)

* in fact, due to the way the parts are packaged, you get a few random parts you don't need left over. This is normal.

With all this mind, my build went very smoothly, see the photos here. I also bought the third party lighting kit, e.g. from Amazon UK here. Although this isn't endorsed by LEGO, the way the van is designed makes fitting the loom of LEDs reasonably easy (about an hour's extra work). See the lighting kit photos here.

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