Two-Story Chinese Inn MOC: 5,200-Piece Build Guide
The short version: this inn MOC uses about 5,200 parts, takes roughly 18 hours at 2 to 3 hours a day, and costs around 900 yuan in parts. The building has two floors — a lobby and counter downstairs, two guest rooms upstairs — plus a back courtyard with a stable and a small light well, and a tavern banner hanging over the front door. The instructions come from the brickplan platform, and the parts list is split by floor and by courtyard section, so two builders working together can finish in about two weekends. It pairs naturally with a historic town street scene.
Step 1: Base and Front Courtyard
Start with a 28x20 stud baseplate. The front courtyard takes up the front third, paved with light grey bricks in a stone-slab colour, with the space for the entrance steps left open. The main building sits on the back two-thirds; the walls alternate off-white and wood-brown pieces to suggest rammed-earth texture, and the corners get column bases. The front door is a double door that opens and closes, and a crossbar above the doorway is left ready for hanging the tavern banner. This step uses roughly 1,300 parts.
Step 2: Ground Floor Lobby and Counter
The ground floor lobby is semi-open. Directly facing the door is a straight counter, with dark brown plates forming the countertop and an abacus, a ledger and small wine jars placed on top. Two square tables with benches fill the lobby, set with tea bowls and dishes of peanuts, and printed scroll pieces hang on the walls. Behind the counter, a row of wine shelves uses transparent pieces as bottles. This floor takes about 1,400 parts, and the lived-in feel comes almost entirely from these small props.
Step 3: Second Floor Guest Rooms and Stairs
A wooden railing gallery runs around the outer wall of the upper floor, reached by a staircase tucked into a corner of the ground floor. The two guest rooms are built with lift-off roofs: each room holds a bed, a nightstand and a window, and the windows use open lattice grille pieces to create Chinese window tracery. A partition wall separates the two rooms, and the sloped roof is laid with tile pieces so it can be lifted off at any time to look inside. This floor uses about 1,500 parts.
Step 4: Back Courtyard Stable and Final Details
The back courtyard holds the stable, fenced with railing pieces into two stalls, with a brick horse, a hay pile and a water trough alongside. In the middle of the light well sits a well, its rim stacked from round cylinder pieces. Finally, hang the tavern banner — a printed piece carries the inn's name — and place two lanterns at the entrance. When everything is done, check your parts against the courtyard module list on the brickplan instruction page. This is the centrepiece of a historic town layout.
FAQ
Q: How many people should build this inn MOC together?
A: Two builders split it very comfortably — one takes the ground floor lobby and the guest rooms, the other takes the back courtyard stable and the front courtyard — and it comes together in about 18 hours, or two weekends if you work well in parallel. Building solo is entirely doable, it just takes longer.
Q: What does the whole thing cost?
A: About 900 yuan. Wall bricks and roof tiles run roughly 400 yuan, wood-brown decorative pieces about 250 yuan, and special items such as wine jars, lanterns and the horse about 150 yuan; the rest is standard parts. That is noticeably cheaper than a street-scene set of comparable size.
Q: Can the second-floor guest rooms be removed to see inside?
A: Yes. The upper roof is built as a lift-off structure, so you can simply pick it up to view the guest rooms. If you want full modularity, connect the second-floor base to the ground-floor walls with a few studs and the entire floor can be lifted off as one piece.
Q: What scene does this suit best?
A: A Chinese historic town street is the natural fit — put it beside a paifang archway, a drum tower and a teahouse and you have a complete old street. It also works as a standalone build with a city gate MOC at the town entrance, with the inn placed naturally mid-street.
Q: Are the special parts — the horse, the wine jars — easy to source?
A: Yes. The brick horse is a common part, wine jars can be substituted with cylinder pieces plus a curved top, and dedicated lantern pieces already exist. Every item in the brickplan parts list is numbered, so missing pieces can be searched and bought by number.