Game Room MakeOver Update

My son and I ventured off to IKEA yesterday with the goal of finding some display cases to help organize the game room.  Now don't laugh, but this was my first excursion into "Kingdom of IKEA" and I found it to be a fascinating experience.

In terms of a plan or objectives, we really didn't have one ' cause we don't roll like that.  We did have some vague guidance from my lovely and scary wife that whatever we bought "better look good" and either be white or a light shade of wood.  Many a man's hopes and dreams have been dashed by similarly vague spousal guidance, but it wasn't my place to question orders.

I did want to get something that would allow me to display my painted miniatures and get easy access to them.  Right now they're stuffed inside of stackable plastic boxes, which while utilitarian, doesn't have a lot of visual appeal and takes up valuable terrain storage space.

After wandering around the store goofing off for an hour or so we settled on the Billy bookcases pictured above.  They come with optional glass doors.  The pricing is very reasonable with a 30" wide by 80" tall bookcase costing $60.00 plus $90.00 for the optional glass doors.  We ended up getting 2 of the 30' wide units with glass doors and 2 smaller (11" wide) versions with out glass doors.  Each of the four units has 5 shelves plus the top and total storage is 4,000 square inches plus another 800 square inches along the tops.

One word of caution, IKEA staff are a little sensitive to the whole "horse meat in the meatballs" story line and sometimes don't see the pure comic genius of references to said incident.  Apparently, asking the server in the IKEA cafe if the meatballs are made with grain fed or free range horses isn't appreciated.

Despite some cold reactions in the cafe, we did manage to pick out or stuff in the warehouse and check out.  One downside of IKEA stuff is, since it's made of press board, it's on the heavy side.  I was very appreciative that my son was around to show off how much stronger he was than the old man.  I was able to goad him into to showing me how strong he was by unloading all of the units by himself.  Finally a return on all those groceries he's consumed...

I'm a little over 75% done with assembly and it's been a lot easier than I thought.  The doors are a snap to attach and actually look really nice.  I may add some puck lighting and replace the wooden shelves with glass at a later date.  Glass shelves from IKEA run $10.00 apiece.

Sadly, my collection exceeds the allotted space but we can add more storage once the Mrs sign's off on our initial setup.  I have done a little estimating and the units will hold my Napoleonic, War of 1812, American Civil War, Roman & Dacian armies.  The smaller shelves in the 11" wide bookcases will hold my Saga and Bolt Action skirmish armies along with the 15mm Flames of War stuff.  Sean's Robotics trophies will go across the top.

The other big plus is that I'll be freeing up a lot of storage space for terrain and such after I get the troops in their shiny new barracks.