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Whether someone’s the parent of a little tyke looking for a set they’re obsessing over, a military veteran putting together sets for post-traumatic stress disorder therapy, or an adult enthusiast looking for a nostalgic childhood set, LEGO has a diverse fanbase of all ages worldwide.
Now, the new downtown Centralia business Brick in the Wall has a little something for all of them in Lewis County.
For local LEGO lovers — aside from new sets sold at various retailers in the Twin Cities — a trip north or south was needed to purchase bulk LEGO bricks for My Own Creations (MOCs) or rare minifigures and discontinued sets at businesses like Sasquatch Bricks in Puyallup or Brickdiculous Shop & Gallery in Portland.
But those trips are no longer needed thanks to Centralia residents Rudy Carrillo and Joe Smith, co-owners of Brick in the Wall.
As they are not an official LEGO retailer, they do not sell the Danish toy company’s current new sets, but instead focus on out-of-print sets, vintage collectable minifigures and bulk bricks for MOCs.
“We’re like a LEGO boutique, but we’re kind of a thrift store at the same time. It’s all for the love of the brick, is why we’re doing this, and for the love of the hobby,” Carrillo said.
Located in downtown Centralia at 108 W. Maple St., Brick in the Wall is open Thursday through Sunday from noon to 6 p.m.
The Chronicle visited Brick in the Wall on Friday, Nov. 7, to learn more about the LEGO offerings Carrillo and Smith have brought to the area and why they decided to start the business.
The duo originally met back in 2016 as their kids were in child care together. Eventually, Carrillo ended up at Smith’s home for dinner one night.
“Our ex-wives were really good friends at the time and they wanted to hang out … We were talking, and he just basically asked me out of nowhere, ‘Hey, do you want to see a LEGO trebuchet?’ I was like, ‘Yeah! Yeah!’ And got really excited,” Carrillo said.
“The trebuchet I built could launch a minifigure all the way across the living room,” Smith added.
While the trebuchet ended up being broken down by Smith’s children, who used the parts for other builds, the two fathers learned they were both big LEGO enthusiasts themselves and their own friendship grew from there.
Aside from purchasing LEGO sets for their children, they were also buying and keeping sets sealed for their own private collections, getting them whenever retailers put them on clearance sales.
“Over the course of the years, we just amassed a huge stockpile of LEGO,” Carrillo said.
Both had particular lines they collected, with Carrillo a fan of the LEGO Star Wars sets and Smith favoring the LEGO Marvel Comics sets.
After both getting divorced, they spent a brief time as roommates together, and with their collections being large enough to joke about “LEGO avalanches” happening in their house, decided to have a pop-up yard sale four years ago.
They then began selling LEGO sets and minifigures as vendors at the Southwest Washington Fairgrounds spring and fall swap meets, and operating as a pop-up business at other events locally.
Over the past year, they also began coordinating with downtown Centralia toy store Let’s Play Something, the Centralia Timberland Library and The Juice Box to organize two “adult LEGO nights.”
“That was a huge event at The Juice Box, and we packed the place,” Smith said.
During this time, the pair of business partners already had their sights set on trying to open up a brick-and-mortar location, keeping an eye out for a potential home for their business. And with a bit of luck, they finally found a space in downtown Centralia, albeit a bit small.
However, Carrillo and Smith used its size for inspiration.
“It’s a really small hole-in-the-wall spot, but we kind of decided, ‘That’s kind of perfect. We’ll get our foot in the door downtown,’” Smith said. “And because it’s such a hole in the wall, we named it ‘Brick in the Wall.’”
“It was a running joke when I was initially looking at the space,” Carrillo added.
Just two weekends ago, they finally held Brick in the Wall’s grand opening. However, if all goes as planned, Brick in the Wall won’t be in that small space for long, as they hope to grow the business.
In their current space, Smith and Carrillo are adding more shelving for displays on the walls and getting a table where customers will be able to scoop out and purchase bulk LEGO bricks by the pound.
But a new larger location will eventually be needed to better accommodate the massive stock of sealed sets they still have in storage.
Sealed sets isn’t all they have, either, as customers at Brick in the Wall may notice that some of the vintage sets have been repackaged and resealed.
Aside from hunting discounted sealed sets at retail stores, Carrillo and Smith purchase completed sets from private sellers, along with open sets — even if some of the pieces are missing.
From there, the completed sets are disassembled and each LEGO brick is cleaned, and if a set is missing a piece, Carrillo and Smith make sure to find a replacement that matches the specific part number LEGO lists in the set’s original instructions.
“I research the parts and make sure they’re era-accurate,” Carrillo added.
Once they can guarantee that a set has all of its original pieces, they bag the bricks up and rebox them with the original instructions included.
“Why not rebox them, give that joy of building it to somebody else?” Carrillo said.
The biggest hit with the customers they’ve had so far is their custom LEGO minifigure building station, as parents who bring their kids in often find their children digging through the different minifigure pieces to create a custom character.
For those building MOCs, Brick in the Wall also sells custom 3D printed stands for builds, along with third party company stickers and motors for builds. As they add more shelving space, they will have more bulk LEGO bricks in stock too.
For more information, call Brick in the Wall at 360-206-8060, email Smith and Carrillo at Brickinthewall2025@gmail.com or follow the business on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/blockpartycentralia.
