Storage solutions: shmeg23
Posted by Huw,
Greg, aka shmeg23, shows us round his LEGO room in Michigan. But first, the sign on the door...
My wife had this sign made for me one Christmas. The dollar below is from a co-worker of my Moms who wanted an alternate Lego model built. I quickly built it for him, so he gave me a dollar and wrote a note about it being my first dollar made in the construction business. I was 14 years old.
My LEGO room is 450 sq ft. The tables take up approximately 300 sq ft.
The front of the table will eventually be shelves for my older sets or non-city sets. I also plan on adding a fish tank below the water to put an underwater scene.
All my pieces are in old engineering drawing cabinets I was given them after my employer digitised all the old drawings. These are from the 1960s and are made of heavy steel. The drawers are 30” deep by 40” wide. There are 30 drawers and all my pieces are stored in here except my larger pieces which are stored I my Lego cart seen to the left of the cabinet.
I place the plastic trays from small parts organisers in the drawers. Those organisers usually come with only a few of the extra plastic inserts so further divide the trays so my solution was black poster board.
Parts are sorted by Special Parts and Bricks/Plates. If needed parts are sorted by colour and type. As I use pieces I sort other parts into colours as well if I have the room or combine parts to make room when I buy bulk pieces.
All parts I currently own are either in that cabinet or part of a set. I have no unsorted parts for the time being. It’s a good feeling. I can pull up an inventory of parts for a set I am rebuilding or fixing and within minutes I can have all the parts ready.
I have had a Lego room since I was 14 at my parents’ house. They built a room specifically for my Lego that would eventually be turned into a guest room in their basement when I moved out.
I was already dating my eventual wife when I had a Lego room so it was just common knowledge that I would keep having a Lego room. When bought my first house I bought a house with a basement with a large enough area for my Lego city. When my wife and I decided to buy a new house she fell in love with a few different designs. I kept telling her that the basements were not big enough for my Lego room. We finally settle on the house that we have. A few years later I finished the basement to finally have my dream Lego area.
I have been working from home since early March. During my free time I have been working on fixing, cleaning, and documenting my collection. Confirming all the pieces are accounted for if not adding them to a missing pieces list to be ordered. I take a picture of the set/instructions and add it to my computer. I have an Excel sheet that tracks all of my sets. Below are some pictures of the sets that have been fixed. They are all over my basement right now.
My goal is to have all the sets fixed / built that I can possibly build out of the parts I have. Add all the sets to my city or to my shelves then start working on the bigger custom projects for the city.
I love when people come over and don’t know about my Lego room. They are stunned to see so much Lego in one place. I am very proud that I can share this with people and get them excited about building with Lego.
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19 comments on this article
Really cool display and I'm envious about all the space you have to give it such a nice display!
And on the table on the last picture, you just have the https://brickset.com/sets/5978-1/Sphinx-Secret-Surprise
And today the Haunted House is/will be available for us VIP !
I do not have so many sets as you do, but it's still fun to see the shocking expression in peoples faces. Maybe it's the existance of a such room to begin with...
I like all the flat extra wide drawers where you can see every black piece in one go in case you don't quite know the one you need. Were these salvage from an architects / planning department office, as seem a lot more industrial and user friendly than the plastic stowage bins we are reluctantly forced to search through for that lost piece? The red bridge is interesting in the classic rather than Technic style, and something you would normally see at Legoland. Looks like there is a lot of work still to do, I spotted the monorail train track (hope you get this going) and the train station, where tracks are always great to help link everything together and split into different zones, port, city, airport etc.
Anyone for table tennis...? ;-)
Nice to see a fellow pinball machine owner. By the way your basement is way bigger than my daughters London flat.
The amount of space in America is crazy :D Love seeing the older roadplates going across that bridge.
Really nice room! So much space, sigh… And the drawers are fantastic.
@Andhe said:
"The amount of space in America is crazy :D Love seeing the older roadplates going across that bridge."
Depends. I have been to US homes that were just as small as a standard UK semi-detached, while otoh I have been to homes in the UK that were enormously spacious and had rooms the size of the one in the above article.
Fix Voltron, his ears must be folded out! ;)
@AustinPowers said:
" @Andhe said:
"The amount of space in America is crazy :D Love seeing the older roadplates going across that bridge."
Depends. I have been to US homes that were just as small as a standard UK semi-detached, while otoh I have been to homes in the UK that were enormously spacious and had rooms the size of the one in the above article. "
I don't doubt that for a second. But property prices are hugely different on average. For the value of my very modest flat in SE England, I could get a detached house that was four times the size in a nice suburb of Detroit. (I chose Detroit for my example as that is the state where Greg's home is. I don't know where in MI his home is; I just chose an affluent neighbourhood in the state's largest city.)
Nice posters in the 3rd photo!
The storage is great! Old stickers reminds me of my grandpa’s garage! And I love your city, with a downtown and a suburb!
Having a good inventory of your Lego is really smart as the values of sets and parts is always on the rise. I suspect I have about $30,000.00 US in Lego, and that is a considerable value of my home in the case of fire or some other damage. Anyone with a substantial Lego collection (which is most of us here), should have at least a decent idea of it's value and that value should be part of your home owners insurance.
Love the monorail track scrap heap--looks like it's a junk yard on the other side of town. Also, excellent idea sending in Voltron to deal with the Blacktrons. They've gone about their nefarious business unchecked for too long!
Caught my attention that you track your stuff in Excel rather than Brickset. I'd be curious to know a little more about that. Why Excel rather than Brickset? Built Excel file yourself to your liking or used some sort of template? What do you all track in Excel?
Wow haha, never knew those cabinets were of any use besides storing drawings! Neat idea. What a great basement... thanks for sharing!
Greg in Michigan, huh? Greg K was a transplant, which doesn't really fit with the explanation about the house. And the other Greg (Greg G?) I think I heard moved out of the state. So, what part of Michigan do you hail from, and have you check out any of the LUGs in the area?
@AustinPowers:
That's very true. In particular, this is influenced by the year of statehood. The smallest states, and the location of the most densely urbanized megalopolis in the US, were the original 13 colonies. As the country expanded to the west, states gradually increased in size, while generally not increasing much (or at all) in terms of population. The irony is that most of the original 13 states still have more privately owned land than, say, Nevada, where the vast majority of the state is federally owned. And while the more urban parts of the country can still produce some ridiculously small homes, if you're willing to live in the suburbs you can own a palatial house for a fraction of the price of a tiny condo.
@Zander:
Clearly you've never been to Detroit... I kid, I kid. Mostly. There are some upscale suburbs, particularly well north of Detroit, and there are some less-affluent suburbs, particular south of Detroit. And there's everything in between. Detroit itself gets even weirder. I've visited a 17,000 square foot mansion in the Boston Edison district in Detroit (the carriage house is about as big as my 9-unit condo building), and there are other places where what few structures remain are burnt-out ruins that have all been stripped of anything valuable.
@ra226:
Blacktron are good guys! They even proved it on LEGO Masters.
Thanks for the comments.
To answer a few questions.
I recently started a make over of the city with all of the sets that I have fixed so my monorail was in 5 piles for all 5 monorail sets I own.
The company I work for was digitizing all the old large drawings so I was able to snap 6 of these cabinets. Definitely much better than the plastic bins. A lot easier to see the pieces you need.
I use excel to track my collection because I have alot of WIP sets. I take a lot of metadata out of the brickset information for my spread sheet. I am very handy with excel so it makes it easier to manipulate the information how i want to see it and automatically calculate how many sets to go. How many pieces missing, which one, How many figures are missing, which ones, etc. I also list the picture for each set in my excel file. I have pictures of every set I have built or if they are still sealed in the box. This helps me keep track for insurance purposes.
When I am truly done fix everything I will upload it to brickset.