Storage solutions: kirkbauer
Posted by Huw,
Kirk, aka kirkbauer, shows us an excellent way to display sets using slatwall, which is more usually seen in shops:
My story is a bit unusual. I had very little LEGO growing up, and what I had was very oriented towards young children. So there were no dark ages for me. But when 21309 NASA Apollo Saturn V was released I thought it was the coolest thing I had ever seen. I quickly bought it and built it and loved it.
That’s the first time I really understood that LEGO made products that looked like real things, and as an adult with little imagination I prefer that. I went on a spending streak and picked up lots of sets that reproduced real things, then started getting modular buildings, then even more. In my typical fashion I went a bit crazy and had to turn our guest room into a LEGO room. This also gave me the opportunity to set up a good LEGO table for my two daughters who were at the perfect age to start getting into LEGO.
OK there is a lot going on here. The first thing you might notice is something that is not LEGO. In fact it is Construx, which was my passion as a child. I kept my collection and acquired a bit more on eBay and all of those bins on the wall store organised Construx pieces. Those Seville Classics racks and bins might also be useful for storing bulk LEGO pieces for some of you out there. You can choose from single-wide, double-wide, and triple-wide compartments, each with optional dividers.
In the centre of the room is our semi-custom LEGO table. I started with four Trofast storage boxes from IKEA and was lucky enough to find the table-top in the scraps area of my local IKEA. Here you can see all the creations that my daughters have put together, along with bulk LEGO storage in the bins underneath.
Finally, I have many of the sets I have built displayed on IKEA Besta shelves which come in a few sizes and can be mounted on the wall if desired. I like these because they are deep enough to fit big sets, and they have optional glass shelves. I put the display pieces up high and the play pieces down below for the kids to enjoy.
At some point I started running out of display space in my LEGO room, so fortunately I had a game room right next door with a giant wall of unused space. So I tried something that I haven’t seen done for LEGO before, and installed some commercial slatwall. This is the stuff that you see in many retail stores, and they make lots of peghooks, shelves, and other attachments for it.
I bought the slatwall from uline.com. It comes in other colours besides white, but we kept it simple. By default, you’ll see unfinished wood inside the “slats” and that’s also where you screw this into the studs in the wall. My suggestion, if you like the look, would be to purchase aluminium inserts that slide into the slats and actually allow them to support more weight. But my wife preferred an all-white look, so we used white vinyl inserts to cover up the unfinished wood. The vinyl inserts come in many colours, so you could have white walls with red inserts, for example.
I didn’t like the look of traditional slatwall shelves where the arms extend completely under the shelves and attach at the ends. So I found these low-profile metal brackets specifically for glass shelves. You put one bracket for every 12” of shelf. They make these in black or silver, and they also have ones that work for wooden shelves if you prefer that. I bought them here.
Finally, I bought all kinds of tempered glass shelves from here. The shelf sizes I have range from 12”x12” (for single models) to 10”x48” (mostly for modular buildings).
Total cost was about USD $1,500 for 100 brackets, four 8’x4’ pieces of slatwall, vinyl inserts, and 40 glass shelves (note that freight for the shelves was more expensive than the actual shelves).
You might notice all the drawers under the slatwall. Those are IKEA ALEX Drawer units on wheels. In my case they currently contain gaming supplies, but they could make for great storage solutions for more LEGO in the future!
There is also the inevitable collection of sets that I haven’t built yet. Fortunately I have two closets and I have them pretty much stuffed to the brim with unbuilt sets.
My second closet also has the boxes, manuals, and extra pieces for all of my assembled sets. I store the boxes flat, I put the extra pieces in a zip-lock bag, and I store the manual plus pieces inside of sturdy photo mailer envelopes with tabbed closure. I write the name and number of the set and store them on that top shelf. These are also from Uline.
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33 comments on this article
Very impressive. You are lucky to have such a good amount of display space! It’s also an incredibly impressive size collection for saying that your first set was from 2017. I would hate to see your monthly Lego bill to achieve that!!
Great setup, especially with the slatwall. Nicely lit room, too.
Museum quality display!
I must be doing something wrong, everything that's within arm's reach of the kids is quickly sucked into their huge pile of mangled sets.
"So I went on a little spending spree" from 0 to 1000% real quick. I wish I could do that. The slat wall is a great idea!
Two Lego rooms! That is really special. I really like how one of them is very much a playroom. (Growing up in the 60's my six siblings and I had a playroom that usually had a big pile of Lego dumped in the middle of the floor.) Your daughters must love that space. It's a dream come true. The other room is fantastic, too, of course, and your closet is out of this world. Lots of fun in your future for sure. Thanks for showing us your collection!
I was intrigued by the red baize table & then I saw some interesting looking (to me) shelves not shown.
It looks like a copy of Indonesia at the closest side & possibly Lords of Waterdeep at the far side (right behind the Blokus)
Love this. The Ikea drawers look great. Had never seen them before
"There is also the inevitable collection of sets that I haven’t built yet. Fortunately I have two closets and I have them pretty much stuffed to the brim with unbuilt sets."
I wish I could have two closets full of sets waiting to be built. Drooling... :)
@Lego_lord said:
"Great setup, especially with the slatwall. Nicely lit room, too. "
It was kind of a downside to going LED five years ago. The bulbs were more focussed than incandescent and I just kept adding new lights until lighting was even!
I'm lucky, my girls are good rules followers. They do play with and mangle a lot of sets but they stick to the only ones they can reach in the play room.
Yes, good eye. Indonesia is probably my favorite game! The wall opposite the skatwall is all Billy shelving with board games :)
The skyline is one of the coolest Lego displays I've seen! You've certainly purchased a TON of Lego since the Saturn V came out, many of which were no longer available from TLG. I wish I had that much space. Very nice!
Themes represented: Modulars, Star Wars (UCS), Architecture, Creator Expert(18+). TLM2, Technic, Ninjago, Ideas, Harry Potter, Pirates of the Caribbean. Variety is the spice of life! When you are ready (capable) of deploying $1500 just for "exposing" your Lego collection and you have two dedicated rooms for that, one must assume that the actual Lego "box" budget must be quite sizeable - which can quite easily be ascertained since most of these sets must have been bought on the secondary market at 4 digits. Good on you if you can afford it and your "little imagination" is surely compensated by your neat way of presenting things.
That Architecture display!
Sydney's opera is definitely one of my favorite set ever. I'm not in Architecture theme because of... Money? Display space? I mean I have to choose among so many themes and great sets. But if I could I would own each of architecture line. Great display though, there is room for each of your piece, they are not too cramped as they can be in my own Lego room, and so one can really appreciate each of them. Great job.
You bought all that since apollo was released????
jealous. Great setup!
Very impressive collection. That's a big display/storage area.
Great collection and display space!
The slatwall is a brilliant solution that I've never seen done in a home before. I'm totally using this idea in 5 or 10 years when we finish the basement.
@tomenadi said:
"You bought all that since apollo was released????"
I thought the same thing. He must have almost endless funds to be able to purchase all these highly sought after EOL sets in such an incredibly short amount of time.
I mean, there are highlights like Robie House, Fallingwater, Queen Anne's Revenge, all those old UCS Star Wars sets, old Modulars like Town Hall et al, Technic hallmarks like 8043, 42009 or the Unimog, plus (almost?) the entire range of current and former Creator Expert sets. The list goes on and on. Those are thousands upon thousands in value. And all that in just three years. Mind-boggling.
Then again, his house must be enormous too, since even just these two LEGO rooms are huge, especially the one with the slatwall display. This looks as if it is at least 10 to 15 meters long. That is longer than our entire house (which in itself isn't small, at least by German standards), and that is only one room.
Incredible as well as enviable. Kudos.
Excellent! I plan on doing something similar. Thanks for the links too!
Yes, for better or worse I tend to go all in on things. I actually sold some investments to cover some of these purchases, justifying it as "diversification". Certainly much of my collection of unopened sets will stay that way.
Everything l have built was either a current set or an old set that I bought already opened, and in many cases without boxes or even manuals. I have definitely purchased some sealed older sets but I hesitate to open them until I run out of other things to build. I also rarely buy new sets at full price. My goal is that I should be able to recoup my money one day at the least.
My house is a bit big even by US standards, but a lot of that space is in the basement, and that's what you are seeing here. A full basement has always been a major factor in house purchases for me. I get the basement, the family gets the rest of the house.
I love your bucket of poly bags. I collect poly bags. I probably don't have that many. Lucky enough to live close enough to the Dreamworld Lego store that we can go in for the monthly builds, but they have stopped that in the last few months :(
@kirkbauer said:
"My house is a bit big even by US standards, but a lot of that space is in the basement, and that's what you are seeing here. A full basement has always been a major factor in house purchases for me. I get the basement, the family gets the rest of the house. "
Funny, my LEGO room is also in our basement (while most of my unopened sets are stored in the attic).
I was most amazed at how quickly you managed to track down all those sets, especially the rarer ones. I have tried to obtain Robie House for a reasonable price for years. As yet no luck. But like you I made it a habit to never pay RRP if possible, and so far have managed to do so most of the time.
Great looking rooms! I love the Construx collection! I also have a ton of Construx in addition to my LEGO bricks. Such an under rated toy line. Thanks for sharing!
Epic.
The slatwall room, wowwwwwwwwwww
That slat wall is such a great idea and the rest of all your spaces look great!! You had great ideas for solutions and looks like you have some room to grow.
All you need is a huge room.
Everyone seems to like the slat wall. Do you have any concerns, long term?
Lego sets, even large ones, aren’t particularly heavy, but the basement, especially if it isn’t as well climate controlled as the rest of the house, tends to be more humid or moist, which could eventually cause wood under stress to warp or even fail.
@aamartin0000 said:
"Everyone seems to like the slat wall. Do you have any concerns, long term?
Lego sets, even large ones, aren’t particularly heavy, but the basement, especially if it isn’t as well climate controlled as the rest of the house, tends to be more humid or moist, which could eventually cause wood under stress to warp or even fail."
I make efforts to keep my basement very dry (through use of a de-humidifier and smart use of climate control). But the slatwall portion is only 6 months old so I can't say for sure. It appears to be more glue than wood so that should help out a bunch. I'd feel better if I had those aluminum inserts in there but that wasn't on the table with my wife :)
Those look like boardgametables.com tables? I have one as well and it is fantastic for building LEGO projects on.