How to blend baseplate roads with MILS plates

[Redteamrocks]

Hey all, 

I've spent a lot of time working on my Lego City recently and am looking for some ideas. Currently all of my buildings are on the MILS system, but my roads are the older baseplate style roads. So when my buildings are butted up against the roads, you can see the bricks under them exposed on the sides facing the roads.

I'm trying to come up with a cost effective way to cover this up so you can't see the bricks underneath. Making a curb out of pieces is not ideal because I'd like to use the extra space on the roadsides for parking spaces. 

Converting all the MILS plates to the color I want (light-bluish gray) is also not ideal either since I'd have to buy $300+ of parts to do this.

Hoping someone might have some more ideas.

Thanks!

[Johnny1360]

I have been planning to implement a MILS solution for my city as well, my plan is to use the new road plates and actually make them into MILS joiner plates. Probably far more costly than what you are looking for but to be honest not sure of a good way to join the older road plates with your MILS units, without picking up a significant amount of bricks.

[Silverhurst]

One solution I've seen is to build a shorter mils plate to set the road plate on top of in order to raise it up. Depending upon how much curb you want showing, you could use one 2x2 plate with a 2x2 tile on top to raise it 2 studs. If this new mils "road plate" is on the edge of your city you can add a one stud wide border "curb" on the outside to hide the mils system and keep the road plate in place. Then just tile the 6 studs that are showing on the road plate to however you want that area to be used in your city, whether as parking, bike lane, wider sidewalk, or greenery. If you want the road plate at a different height, just use an additional plate or no plate to get the height you want. The only issue with this method is connection points to your other mils plates. You could tie the two mils plates together with a 2x4 or 2x6 plate in between the pillars instead of using pin connectors in this case.

[El Garfio]

Some solutions:

1. Create some pillars with bricks small 4x4 squares with a technic brick in one of the sides

The problem, you probably need to cover the squares with tiles to improve the stability and that means 4 studs high

2. Create the pillars with 1 o 2 studs deep plates 

Advantage: you can do it 2 studs high

Problem: you can't attach the pillars to the regular MILS modules 

3. Use new road plates

Problem: expensive

4, create grey stickers with concrete or exposed brick pattern and cover the laterals of the mils modules

Problem: it's very shabby

[FGMatt]

Can you not just make a "topless" MILS tile on which the baseplates sit? They'll be loose, but as long as they're surrounded by other plates that shouldn't be an issue. I think that a baseplate sitting on top of a stud is the same height as a plate.