I’ve been away from this project for a bit while battling a pinched nerve in my neck.  It caused pain in my shoulder which makes working on projects like this difficult.  The project could also aggravate the problem as well.

The ninth step is now complete.  This step built the corners of the center of the building building.

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The step took about two hours and 30 minutes to complete.

This step also led to the completion of the building’s walls.

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I’m now able to setup the entire base of the Taj Mahal.

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When you see all of these pieces assembled you do really begin to get a sense of just how large the structure is in LEGOs.  All that remains now is to complete the roof and place the dome.

The eighth step is now complete.  This step built the main sides of the center building.

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This step took about 5 hours to complete.  Four sections were completed at the same time.  But, I was also moving slowly as I was distracted by the movie my wife was watching (The Muppet Movie) and later by dumb cheesey movie that was on SciFi (The Immortal Voyage of Captain Drake).

The last part of this step also resulted in the first “disaster” in assembling this model.  The dark grey grill and tile work that surrounds the face of the alcove uses SNOT (studs not on top) construction.  It is a very tight fit to get that assembly in place.  On one I pressed too hard and blew the side of the backing structure off.  Fortunately it was very easy to loosen things up a bit, get the blown out pieces back in place, and put the grill and tile work in place.

The seventh step is now complete.  This step added the main dome to the model.

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This step took approximately 1 hour and 30 minutes to complete.

The next section is the main portion of the building.

The sixth step is now complete.  This part was actually divided into a number of smaller steps to complete the walls of the dome.  This entry is going to have a lot of pictures to show various stages of this rather complex construction.

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This step required approximately 1 hour and 45 minutes to complete.

The fifth step is now complete.

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This step took about 1 hour and 30 minutes to complete.  It was made simpler by completing all four of the towers at the same time.

With adding the towers to the base it is starting to take shape.

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The fourth step is now complete.

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This step took 2 hours and 50 minutes to complete.  Again, it was a lot of rummaging through bags to find the correct pieces.  Building both copies at the same time helped substantially as the parts necessary for both sections were either in the same bag or similar bags.

This step completes the base or lower section of the structure.

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The next step will be to add the corner towers.

The third step is complete.  This step included building two copies of one of the corners of the base.

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This step took 2 hours and 50 minutes to complete.  Again, it was a lot of rummaging through bags to find the correct pieces.  Building both copies at the same time helped substantially as the parts necessary for both sections were either in the same bag or similar bags.

The second step is complete.  This step is the center of the back side.

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This step took approximately 2 hours and 50 minutes.  Again, the time on this step was mostly de to the hunting through all of the bags to find the pieces.

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This very first step required 32 pieces from 5 different bags.  Twenty of the pieces came from the same bag.

The completed assembly.

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This step took about 2 1/2 hours to complete.  Most of the time was simply spent looking for the pieces.  Part of that might be because I refuse to dump all of the pieces out.