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hey all, thought i'd share my latest build...our LEGO room!

so about a year ago I built a lego play area in our basement, which looked something like this...

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It wasn't much, but it was a start. it was a mostly color sorted system, but still like half of the bins were type sorted. I think it's a good method for kids or casual building, since sorting is a lot easier/faster and at the time it was 100x better than digging through a huge bin...but I soon realized type sorting was the only way to go.

Since we were still getting settled into a new house and had an extra bedroom that wasn't getting used, I decided to annex it in the name of Lego.

Here's the workbench part of the room and the view you see when walking in. I'm using a 10mm lens so this room looks bigger than it is, it's roughly an 11x11 room. we had an empty room to play with and after a year of pondering what we'd do with it, we decided a LEGO room would be the best use :) The workspaces are for my daughter and I, and the yellow chair is for my wife so she can hang out with us.

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All the storage bins are IKEA Trofast and I custom build the work bench on a frame of 2x4s and plywood with large trofast bins on each side. I was a bit worried the 7ft span in the middle would be too much but since one end is supported on the wall directly to the studs and the top is pretty solid, it is actually really sturdy.

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Here's a bottom view of the work bench, I added some 3/4 melamine panels to the back of the bins to stop the bins from going too far back and for adding some extra support for the workbench.

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Since I hate painting 2x4's I decided to face the front edge using some cut up grey baseplates i had that were partially damaged. I just cut them on a table saw and epoxied them on. I used bricks between them so assure they would be properly spaced and i'm sure someday we'll decorate them, but even as grey plates it looks good.

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Close up view of the front edge surface...

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Next up was lighting. The room has crappy lighting so I replaced the fan/light combo with a large ikea light and was going to hang ikea work lamps above the work bench, but then I realized it would obstruct the wall and be generally annoying. so I decided to wire up some LED strips I had left over from another project. These are warm white 3-chip LED flexible strips from superbrightled.com that i just adhered to some aluminum L channel. Then I cut more baseplate strips and epoxied them on to the L channel and then covered the entire L channel face with 2x yellow plates (only the already damaged baseplates were kraggled).

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The lights are 12V LEDs and draw about 1.2amp, so I used an old 3amp 12V converter I had laying around in my pile of converters then wired them to a toggle switch that mounted to this LEGO case.

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Here you can see the view underneath, I had to cut up some of the edging strips so the light could stay flush which was a PITA. Had I planned to do the LEDs before installing the bin frames I could have done that a bit cleaner.

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Using some left over L channel, a few screws and some 3M double sided tape I made this little 2x shelf for some of our favorite minifigs (i may need to make this longer :)

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My little corner, the Simpsons house and the modular are in for repairs...

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The space man decal was in the plan from the beginning, hence the red wall. here's the first two layers on, the extra squares are for registration.

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Here's the final decal. I made the illustration myself and used to sell these on etsy in a single color, but even though it was original artwork, the LEGO lawyers still objected to it so it's no longer for sale. :(

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Some of the small bin labels, it's so nice having a vinyl cutter.

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Here's a detail of the labels I made, I used this funny shape at the top to help me position the decals easily using the plastic supports in the bin's lip for alignment, it worked out great.

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Some of the small bin labels. I was a bit concerned about my choices for organization, I agonized over it for a long time, but it worked out pretty well. I have a few changes I'm going to make and I may do another small trofast set in the closet to handle some oddball groups like nacelles, and vertical wing/stabilizers. The one big mistake I made was forgetting about modified plates larger than 1x2. Not sure where those are going yet, for now they're in a loose bin in the closet.

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Here's the opposite wall which is mostly just straight bricks/plates/tiles. The trick with this side was that I only had room for 6 large bin frames and the small bin frames didn't exactly fit on top of that, so I modified one small bin frame so it was only 2 bins wide then used the cut off scraps to fill the gaps. Then I just covered the tops with some black melamine to make the top nice and usable.

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Here you can see the modified small bin frame. I also added a backer piece of melamine to keep the bins or bricks from falling back. The bins in this pic still have their old labels on from our first sort which was mixed sort with color/type. You can see how I made spacers from the cut off pieces of the shortened frame to fill the gaps between them.

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Some of the brick bins are a bit crowded, I may sort some out, or stack em to save space. I had a few PAB cups of some colors I stashed in the closet to keep the bin more manageable, for now they are ok. if they get too full I may go thru them and retire some of the scratched up bricks.

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My wife's contribution to the room, this awesome embroidery of the girl robot minifig...

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The closet is a pretty good size too and has some room for bins as well, definitely going to pick some up next time I'm at ikea...

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The big re-sort was pretty brutal, but seemed to go a lot faster than the previous sort, no doubt because a lot of types had been separated out...

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sorting the types from previously sorted-by-color piles as pretty soothing to the old OCD though...

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anwyay, that's it, hope you've enjoyed the pics!

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I would love to have a room like this, \i think my wife would kill me though. I like the decals for the wall, great detail, love the light switch. Ikea must loved you after that purchase :laugh:

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Very nice room. You need to convince your wife to bring her chair up to the be ch so she can joe in the fun.

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thanks all!

Very nice room. You need to convince your wife to bring her chair up to the bench so she can joe in the fun.

yeah the wife is happy to just chill, although she did help me build some SW mini ships :)

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Wow, you really released the builder within. If you are as handy with your bricks as with you woodwork, we can expect some really really great moc's from you...

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I sooooo envy you right now ! That looks perfect, wish I had the space/time and money to do something like this. Love the way you integrated the LED strip :laugh::thumbup: :thumbup:

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Wow, that room and setup is really cool. I especially like how you use old baseplates to cover up front panels and the LED strip.

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Nice room. I really like the red wall with the logo and the classic space minifig. :thumbup:

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Congratulations! Nicely organized, it looks like a great place to build.

Andy D

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This is just fantastic. I love it so much.

I would love to have a room like this, \i think my wife would kill me though.

My wife is very much the opposite - she can't wait until I get the big LEGO room nicely organized, and she might well kill me if I don't get it done! This is the mess it's in now:

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I've got a long way to go, obviously. Fortunately I have a ton of room to play around in - it may not be obvious from the picture, but this is the largest room in the house (you can see only part of it here); it was originally built as a two-car garage, and then converted into a big den sometime before we rented the property. It's therefore huge, and even though it won't be devoted entirely to LEGO (we also use it for TV/movies, crafts, etc., and there's also a laundry / storage room at the back, just to the right of those wire rack shelves), there's still a vast space available, and I intend to fill much of it with a big play / display table where I can have huge city layouts (or whatever other theme I feel like), plus a dedicated building and storage area along the side wall you can see to the left (you can already see the beginnings of this with the long, narrow IKEA table that's already there, with a built Palace Cinema and several smaller sets already on it).

Anyway, I really want to get this room into shape and turn it into an awesome LEGO space, and my wife wants that, too (she's even gotten into LEGO herself, albeit not to the same extent), and apart from wanting it to be a great LEGO space we both just want all the clutter taken care of. It'll take a while, though.

Anyway, droomangroup, your room is fantastic. I love your Classic Space wall art! I have to say I wonder about your drawer system, since all the tops are open; is dust not much of an issue? They look great, though.

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Great build! :laugh::thumbup:

I like the craftsmanship you put in this room. Very enjoyable to read this topic.

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I am pretty sure there are lids for those IKEA Trofast storage bins. In fact, you can't be sure there not on the bins used in the photos...

Nice LEGO work room by the way, but my question is: where do you DISPLAY all your lovely models?

Edited by TheLegGodt

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Great room. Shows what you can do with a bit of imagination, the right tools and time. I will strive for something similar.

Love it!

H :thumbup:

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thanks again everyone.

I am pretty sure there are lids for those IKEA Trofast storage bins. In fact, you can't be sure there not on the bins used in the photos...

Nice LEGO work room by the way, but my question is: where do you DISPLAY all your lovely models?

for now there is room on the shelves, but i'm sure that will get crowded. there's a few places i can add more shelves and i figured if it gets too crowded i can rotate stuff in/out of the closet. I'm actually not a big keeper of builds, especially sets, so i'm not too worried about it. i'd rather have bins full of parts. :)

there are lids for those bins at ikea but it would be a pain if they were there. dust hasn't been an issue and i live in a pretty dusty place with occasional high winds.

Wonderful room and layout. Who is the second chair for?

thanks, it's for my 10yo daughter. that whole side of the bench is hers so she has a place to keep her builds and make a her own mess. i cut the counter surface so that it's two equal sized pieces which is nice because it draws the border between our spaces. she still likes playing on the floor with friends, but when it's just us she'll hang at the table.

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Wonderful room that you built there! I also really loved your classic Lego Space decal. Makes it very welcoming to see the little guy smiling at you. I was also curious about dust issues?

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