Days Six and Seven: Almost There!

  I wrote this blog's title and now can't get that song from The Princess and the Frog out of my head, of well.  Anyways, this week the castle came together smoothly, or mostly smoothly and we are almost done.  Which is good because we have now have little more that two weeks until our exhibition and we'll miss one class because of Thanksgiving break.  Karishma finished the programming for the great hall this week, so our Harry versus Voldemorte battle is complete.  I won't tell more, because its a surprise.  I fixed the supports on the bottom of the second stack of rooms.  I tried my best to get the LEGO's sturdy, but when we do move this castle upstairs fro exhibition, we'll have to move it in parts.  We acknowledged this from the beggining as the castle grew larger(and heavier), but now its for sure, as long as the castle isn't being moved, the support columns on the bottom should be fine.
  So that was Tuesday's work.  On Thursday, we moved on to finishing Fluffy's room and the room of requirement.  I had one of the room's finished, and then quickly finished the other's construction.  We moved the small room, from being on top of the already constructed room  and moved it so that it now straddles, part of the hallway.  This works better in the overall construction as it helps connect the great hall and the stacked rooms, both constructionally and visually.  It definently is more visually appealing.  We ran into some issues with trying to figure out how to get the door to open in the room of requirement, but that was solved at the end of class when we found out there was a motor smaller than the one we were using, that went at a slower speed, and so had enough torq to open our LEGO door.  That was exciting.  So I think we will be in a very good position when leaving for Thanksgiving.  When we get back, all that's left is to put in all the accessories and decor; hand banners in the great hall, decorate the room of requirement with stuff, stylize the DADA classroom (this may take thought as to what year we would want it to display), and then to set-up Fluffy and the Sorcerer's Stone.  I'm starting on the Maurader Map Instructions this weekend hopefully, if not, I'll finish it over the break.  That will be fun to do, I think.  Well, here's the pictures from this week.

Here's one of the cross beams we put in to help keep the support columns from break/bending.

Here's a view of the extended hallway without the stairs.

This is a top view of the door to the room of requirement.
It took a while to find the right LEGO piece in which to make
hinge for the door.

Here's a picture of the hall with the stairs added in.

Another stairway picture.