999 bricks and room for one more...

OK, actually there's 680 bricks in this spooky set, but I couldn't resist the headline.

I've not made that much LEGO this year so far. I know. Who am I, and what have I done with the real Cavan?

But this bank holiday weekend, the now-retired Haunted Mansion called to me from the to-build stack – complete with a suitably grave butler.

It's a cute little set based on the original Disneyland Mansion, which I've been obsessed with ever since first reading about the place in the 1980s. I was completely Scooby-Doo loopy at the time, so it hooked me from the first ghostly glimpse.

These days, it's the first queue I run for whenever I visit the park, and is represented by numerous pieces of merch dotted around my studio (including not one but two hats – the first of which featured in possibly the fakest High Republic summit photo ever staged!)

Complete with those iconic columns, the outside of the model is a pretty good reproduction of the Mansion, which was itself based on two buildings in Baltimore – the Evergreen Museum and Library and the now-demolished Shipley-Lydecker House.

Initially, the Imagineers designed the Mansion to look ramshackle and broken down – your stereotypical haunted ruin, covered in cobwebs and moss – but Walt Disney wasn't keen on anything looking shabby in his park and quickly demanded that they spruce it up!

"We will take care of the outside," Walt told them, "but let the Ghosts take care of the inside.

Build-wise, I have to say setting up the walls behind all those green arches was a little fiddly and repetitive, but I appreciated how the designers tried their best to squeeze in as many Haunted Mansion call-backs into such a small space.

Now, what I wouldn't give for a full-size Mansion. At the moment, I'm making do with LEGO's Haunted Mansion-inspired Haunted House, which sits in pride of place behind my desk on Zoom calls.

My next build is probably going to be the 10351 Sherlock Holmes Book Nook which folds out into a Baker Street diorama.

That one’s already pre-ordered, although my finger is also hovering dangerously over the button for the Batman Forever Batmobile.

The movie itself is, ahem, a little uneven (please don't come at me, Val fans!) but I've always liked Schumacher's neon ride.

It's not just chicks that dig that car!