Storage solutions: AppaBrick
Posted by Huw,
AppaBrick shows us his custom-made drawers and display solution:
I've been living in Canada near Vancouver for the past 10 years but I grew up in France. My childhood was in the early eighties and Lego was my main toy, so Classic Space, City and Castle from the time means so much to me.
I didn't really organise my Lego early on, so they were scattered in several rooms, fortunately somewhat limited in the space they were taking. I don't know exactly when, maybe when I was around 12, I started sorting Lego. I think I continued building new creations until the end of high school and buying a few technic cars like 8070 and 8880 then came a nearly 25 year dark age with very scarce Lego purchases but one non-Lego brick set (Oxford, Kre-O in other countries) while living in Korea.
We eventually moved to Canada in 2009 and my dark age exit was in 2012 when my elder son, 4 at the time, got his first Lego set 4636, I tinkered so much with this little set and my son really got into Lego, we gave him more Lego for his birthday, Christmas...
In late 2012, my childhood house in France had to be sold and its content had to be moved away including all the Lego I had been collecting during my childhood and there was a lot, also being in Canada I couldn't ship it here. Moreover, there weren't any children the right age in my family in France to transmit to. I did value my collection at the time but now I regret not shipping everything here... I did manage to bring some bulk parts and minifigs including some Classic Space ones!
My son's collection and mine by extension started growing and Lego came back with a vengeance! So organising and sorting was getting essential. We started with 500024, a humble beginning, then I added some Ikea compartment boxes. Eventually outgrowing all that, I wanted to same drawer cabinets Lego has but couldn't find them online, I looked into flat file cabinets but were so expensive, so I had no choice but to make what I needed myself.
I enjoy building things, so I came up with flat file drawers with some kind of modularity as I can add more drawers on top of each other. The other issue was to find the right sorting trays, I eventually find ones that meet my needs from Lee Valley, divider boxes. We still have some empty drawers for parts that I'll sort one day...
In the meantime, collecting mainly modulars, I wanted to make a strip with all of them and eventually I made a Lego wall with most of our collection, the sorting drawers, a flat surface to put our most recent sets and the strip on one shelf. I also have a small corner near my home office desk with a few sets.
I don't have much time now to build my own sets, I did submit 2 to Lego Ideas the Space Explorer and Wallace & Gromit. I must say I like sorting parts and building sets with instructions with my sons. My sons take full advantage of the sorting drawers to build their own creations.
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36 comments on this article
Love the home made drawers and shelves very Canadian! Great for kids to see everything as they don't know what is available to use until they see it! The depth is amazing as well compared to commercial drawers, and allows a large surface area on top to display everything as well. Looks like a fun place to spend the day.
This is the reason why I wish I was handy with tools to make custom drawers like this! This is great!
The way the top shelf bends makes me extremely uncomfortable x)
The width and depth of the drawers seem perfect. Fits perfectly to the purpose. You really need to support the top shelf.
Your storage drawers are brilliant! By "modularity" do you mean you can move the actual drawers independently to rearrange them? It looks like each is a 2x4 frame on the side and they're all stacked on top of each other. Great idea.
Those broad, shallow drawers are a good solution to storing large quantities of bricks in an accessible way, and it must be satisfying that your sons enjoy using them. Using the brick separators as handles is very clever, too! Thanks for sharing your storage solution with all of us!
As someone who is also building shelving to fit their needs - I applaud your work!
One of my favorite submissions! I enjoyed your story (and share your enjoyment of sorting pieces to help my son build with instructions.(I spy a Rexcelsior- my son's largest set!)) . I am looking into making some thin drawers just like that. Thanks for the inspiration!
Nice! Your city has some serious traffic problems lol.
I have a system that I use and is modular. https://imgur.com/a/GY9Vi0i and https://imgur.com/vWp0LUP
I have about 10 of these cabinets, and I made the labels for each drawer. If anyone is interested I can link where I got them and share the label file I used.
@soundmarsh said:
"I have a system that I use and is modular. https://imgur.com/a/GY9Vi0i and https://imgur.com/vWp0LUP
I have about 10 of these cabinets, and I made the labels for each drawer. If anyone is interested I can link where I got them and share the label file I used. "
Yes please. I've been looking for drawers like that.
@Apg1808 said:
"The way the top shelf bends makes me extremely uncomfortable x)"
Ne vous inquiétez pas trop, il n'y a pas beaucoup de poids sur cette étagère.
Don't worry too much, there's not too much weight on it.
@Catarino said:
"This is the reason why I wish I was handy with tools to make custom drawers like this! This is great!"
Thank you!
Tiago Catarino himself enjoys the drawers. I saw some pictures of the drawers at Lego in the "The Great Lego Sets" book and I wanted the same ones or at least similar. I couldn't find the Lego ones and they were for a much larger collection. So there was no choice, I had to make them!
@ambr said:
"Love the home made drawers and shelves very Canadian! Great for kids to see everything as they don't know what is available to use until they see it! The depth is amazing as well compared to commercial drawers, and allows a large surface area on top to display everything as well. Looks like a fun place to spend the day."
Thank you!
I used "Full Extension Slides" just like for most kitchen drawers.
@Lego_lord said:
"The width and depth of the drawers seem perfect. Fits perfectly to the purpose. You really need to support the top shelf. "
Thank you!
It bends but won't break... but as @Apg1808 it's uncomfortable to see.
@mfg3000 said:
"Those broad, shallow drawers are a good solution to storing large quantities of bricks in an accessible way, and it must be satisfying that your sons enjoy using them. Using the brick separators as handles is very clever, too! Thanks for sharing your storage solution with all of us!"
Thank you!
Yes, that's was I looking, "flat file drawer". My elder son came up with brick separators solution, they're not handles though, it's just to have them handy, we always need them, don't we?
@chief7575 said:
"As someone who is also building shelving to fit their needs - I applaud your work! "
Thank you!
The top ones are the latest addition and they work much better and made them narrower to even save more space.
@PapaWalt said:
"One of my favorite submissions! I enjoyed your story (and share your enjoyment of sorting pieces to help my son build with instructions.(I spy a Rexcelsior- my son's largest set!)) . I am looking into making some thin drawers just like that. Thanks for the inspiration!"
Thank you!
Don't hesitate to ask for tips.
@Your_Future_President said:
"Nice! Your city has some serious traffic problems lol. "
Thank you!
Busy as it gets!
@soundmarsh said:
"I have a system that I use and is modular. https://imgur.com/a/GY9Vi0i and https://imgur.com/vWp0LUP
I have about 10 of these cabinets, and I made the labels for each drawer. If anyone is interested I can link where I got them and share the label file I used. "
Please share a link. How far do they extend?
I know people already said it but I will say it again, the top shelf is scary to look at, whether it would break or not (I know you gonna say no, you already did). We already said our advise, whether to listen or not of course it's up to you.
@graymattr said:
"Your storage drawers are brilliant! By "modularity" do you mean you can move the actual drawers independently to rearrange them? It looks like each is a 2x4 frame on the side and they're all stacked on top of each other. Great idea."
Thank you!
By modularity, I mean I could stack more drawer units on top of each other. I actually started with half this amount. But it's not very accurate and they don't fit exactly so rearranging them around is not very convenient. I used simple 2x4 at the beginning and some are not exactly straight but now I use 1x3 to make them narrower and save even more space. Drawers are held by "Full Extension Slides". If you have more questions, don't hesitate to ask me.
@vader11 said:
"I know people already said it but I will say it again, the top shelf is scary to look at, whether it would break or not (I know you gonna say no, you already did). We already said our advise, whether to listen or not of course it's up to you."
Thank you for the advice.
I think I have an idea on how to fix that.
Absolutely awesome storage idea! Thank you for sharing!
@Huw-I'm not sure if there's been another feature here that drives me to the site each day. This storage ideas idea is addicting!
I am running out of them so hopefully more people will submit theirs so it can continue.
@Huw said:
"I am running out of them so hopefully more people will submit theirs so it can continue."
How do we submit our "storage solutions?"
Nice. Top shelf could use some support. It's already bent under weight.
Send to helpdesk @ brickset.com, text and images separately preferably, with placeholders in the text to indicate where the images should go.
@Apg1808:
I mean, it's not ideal. It certainly doesn't look professional to just lay a board across that big a span, but that's actually a fairly minimal bow for such a long board. It looks like it's over an inch out of true, but less than two inches. _Any_ board laid across that span in that way would bow at least a little bit, even with nothing on it, unless it was already bowed in the other direction. Flatbed semi trailers and intermodal train cars use that very same trick, with the bed of the transport surface intentionally bowed upwards so that when it's loaded with cargo it won't sag in the middle.
So today Lego is supposed to launch VIP limited sets, but certain ones, namely the Brick says "GWP" and 40221 Fountain says "TBC" - does anyone know what that means? Other ones say /NA which means north america. Are these other ones regions?
Beautiful! I love to see other peoples collections and storage solutions and seeing someone who's local makes it all the more special!
But as a Classic Space fan myself and that you mentioned it in your write up, where are your Classic Space sets?? I can only see 70816, 11910 and the 3x6 Classic Space slope in your office corner.
Cheers!
Simply flipping that top board over should help solve the sagging issue, with the weight of the sets applied it should flatten out nicely as the board is now pre-bowed and will tend to want to stay that way.
Looks tho like it's made up of 3 separate boards - maybe bonding those together might also help keep the entire shelf more rigid.
@Hemel said:
"Beautiful! I love to see other peoples collections and storage solutions and seeing someone who's local makes it all the more special!
But as a Classic Space fan myself and that you mentioned it in your write up, where are your Classic Space sets?? I can only see 70816, 11910 and the 3x6 Classic Space slope in your office corner.
Cheers!"
Thank you!
Unfortunately, I had to sell my Lego collection including Classic Space when my childhood house in France was sold and living in Canada I couldn't bring it here...
Check my expired project: https://ideas.lego.com/projects/c2505b00-5b27-4476-aa7f-148768e92874, a modern twist to Classic Space
@darkstonegrey said:
"Simply flipping that top board over should help solve the sagging issue, with the weight of the sets applied it should flatten out nicely as the board is now pre-bowed and will tend to want to stay that way.
Looks tho like it's made up of 3 separate boards - maybe bonding those together might also help keep the entire shelf more rigid."
Thank you! I was thinking about adding some 2x2 under the 3 boards.
Great to see another GVRDer!
@kkoster79
GWP stands for Gift With Purchase. Those are the free sets you get for making a qualifying purchase (X amount of dollars, sometimes tied to a specific theme). I have no idea what TBC stands for.