After the near-disaster in the first “scene”, I was able to complete the second step in building 6080 King’s Castle without incident. My washing routine with the brick pool was also working well. But by the third scene, I was back to square one: another castle grey 1×2 angled roof tile required. By this time I had decided to simply make notes of missing pieces and move on for the time being, but considering how basic this brick seemed, I decided to go have a look-see anyway. It turns out, I was also missing two grey 2×2 inverse roof tiles for the staircase, so why not search for those as well. I must have these lying around the house somewhere, right?

First I went through the same box that I found the previous roof tile in, but while a new search contributed another couple of dozen black and grey pieces to the project, even some grey 2×2 roof tiles, no luck with the inverse ones or a 1×2. At this point I realized how much time it actually takes to look for bricks from my childhood LEGO collection. I literally spent a couple of more hours scouring through it and indeed found many more relevant bricks, including several much-needed LEGO Castle minifigure pieces and weapons. No luck with the grey 2×1 roof tile, though, I have that brick in many other colors but apparently none more in grey. Also, I couldn’t find those inverse tiles either.

This time spent with my old LEGO collection taught me a few things. First, how much easier things would have been, had the bricks been sorted somehow. Second, trying to dig into a large container full of LEGO, holding back the avalanches with one hand and searching with the other, is not really very effective in a complete search. It turns out (no pun intended), the most effective way is turning the box upside down and pouring all the pieces out – and then searching while refilling the box. I actually did this for my sorted grey brick box and some of the storage boxes I had my childhood LEGO in. Here is what one of those piles looked like:

While laborsome, this process yielded me the most new bricks so far. I walked away with a much replenished brick stack, especially important were many of the smaller bricks and bars I found. It was also a welcome walk down the memory lane, reminding me of all the bricks and dismantled sets I have in there. This information should come useful later. What I did not walk away with, however, were the 1×2 roof tiles and 2×2 inverse roof tiles in castle grey. I must have these lying around the house somewhere, right? Wrong, it seems. Time to mark those bricks as missing in action and continue the fight.

Note: You can click the images for larger versions.