My Office Showroom Build (Display, Lighting, Mod Tips & Service)

[earthdog]

My office showroom build-out. (IKEA Detolf, Klingsbo, Expedit, custom cabs & ...

That's just what my quick research is turning up. Something in the 50-75 gallon range seems to be the right size for some of my planned dioramas but these start around $300. I also saw one online tank retailer offers custom memorabilia cases so I plan on looking into that further.

 

[Pixelpiper]

Re: My office showroom build-out. (IKEA Detolf, Klingsbo, Expedit, custom cabs & ligh

Larger tanks require thicker glass to support the water pressure. That means much more expensive glass. A display cabinet doesn't need thick glass as there's no pressure differential. It's pretty easy to build your own tank to your own specs with nothing more than sheet glass and silicone (buy the stuff to use in a caulking gun, not small tubes).

 

[earthdog]

Re: My office showroom build-out. (IKEA Detolf, Klingsbo, Expedit, custom cabs & ligh

Larger tanks require thicker glass to support the water pressure. That means much more expensive glass. A display cabinet doesn't need thick glass as there's no pressure differential.

So wise. Hadn't even considered that. I just saw some tanks with bowed fronts and really liked that style.

 

[earthdog]

Re: My office showroom build-out. (IKEA Detolf, Klingsbo, Expedit, custom cabs & ligh

Have you ever made or seen a figure display that was very long and deep instead of the traditional wide displays?

I'm toying around with the idea of a 5-ish foot long Death Star corridor only visible from one end, blast door at the far end. Troopers and Vader inside.

 

[Pixelpiper]

Re: My office showroom build-out. (IKEA Detolf, Klingsbo, Expedit, custom cabs & ligh

Someone please have sympathy for me. In my day to day, I do sales and support my own products.

Today, a customer just asked for a refund and to return a product. That wouldn't be a huge issue except that I've spent at least 18 emails helping them work around their own stupidity in setting up the product to do something it supports, but is not the typical intended purpose it's advertised for. Something that is covered in FAQs and Help documentation included with the product. Something that I know with 100% certainty works well and every time. Something they told me was working fine a few days ago after the first batch of emails only to not be working today - obviously they did something since then. So I told them I'm happy to help them get it back to working order and asked a couple of questions - more email time wasted. Then they come back asking for a refund. Why have wasted my time at all today with the first email?

I've been nothing but insanely polite the entire time and have honestly spent more time hand-holding them that is covered by the profit I made on the sale. So even before asking for this refund, I'd already lost money on this transaction. I don't even charge a restocking fee, only keeping the original shipping charge, which is far beyond fair. The sale was to another country (english speaking) and I have a feeling he's going to screw up the packaging and/or shipping label for the return and I'm going to have to deal with more problems like broken merchandise or customs charges. Arrrrgh!

Some people are total s4itheels - it really wipes away a lot of the positive energy from other parts of the day.

 

[earthdog]

Re: My office showroom build-out. (IKEA Detolf, Klingsbo, Expedit, custom cabs & ligh

Someone please have sympathy for me. In my day to day, I do sales and support my own products.

Today, a customer just asked for a refund and to return a product. That wouldn't be a huge issue except that I've spent at least 18 emails helping them work around their own stupidity in setting up the product to do something it supports, but is not the typical intended purpose it's advertised for. Something that is covered in FAQs and Help documentation included with the product. Something that I know with 100% certainty works well and every time. Something they told me was working fine a few days ago after the first batch of emails only to not be working today - obviously they did something since then. So I told them I'm happy to help them get it back to working order and asked a couple of questions - more email time wasted. Then they come back asking for a refund. Why have wasted my time at all today with the first email?

I've been nothing but insanely polite the entire time and have honestly spent more time hand-holding them that is covered by the profit I made on the sale. So even before asking for this refund, I'd already lost money on this transaction. I don't even charge a restocking fee, only keeping the original shipping charge, which is far beyond fair. The sale was to another country (english speaking) and I have a feeling he's going to screw up the packaging and/or shipping label for the return and I'm going to have to deal with more problems like broken merchandise or customs charges. Arrrrgh!

Some people are total s4itheels - it really wipes away a lot of the positive energy from other parts of the day.

That's terrible but unfortunately... typical. Have you tried a phone call instead of email? I've found, for some people, that just explaining the same thing over a phone conversation has far better results than an email that says the same thing.

 

[kristianvanek]

Re: My office showroom build-out. (IKEA Detolf, Klingsbo, Expedit, custom cabs & ligh

there are some really nice ways to display some gear here. i will be stealing some ideas once my new house is built. so i can display my stuff nice

 

[Pixelpiper]

Re: My office showroom build-out. (IKEA Detolf, Klingsbo, Expedit, custom cabs & ligh

Hopefully some new pictures will be coming this way for Christmas. The rest of the background images were printed this week and I'm just finishing up with the cutting and mounting now.

I'll be holding off on updating any broken image links for a while as Flickr is still making changes to their embed features.

 

[Pixelpiper]

Re: My office showroom build-out. (IKEA Detolf, Klingsbo, Expedit, custom cabs & ligh

I ran out of double-sided tape, so I didn't finish mounting all the backgrounds yet. But I did get the two I needed in one of the Detolfs to get cracking on adding to the Indy shelf…

So here's another WIP preview of my Indiana Jones shelf:

 

[Rambler]

Re: My office showroom build-out. (IKEA Detolf, Klingsbo, Expedit, custom cabs & ligh

Wow, that looks really good Pixel. So much better than the background HT shipped with the DX05

 

[Pixelpiper]

Re: My office showroom build-out. (IKEA Detolf, Klingsbo, Expedit, custom cabs & ligh

Wow, that looks really good Pixel. So much better than the background HT shipped with the DX05

The DX05 background is in there too. But the floor and ceiling are custom. Hopefully I'll get the chance to whip out my real camera on a tripod to get some shots.

I've just brought Indy and Superman out of storage and onto their respective shelves for the first time. And it's about time. Both still need much better posing/futzing, but at least this will give them a chance to air-out. Wow, the paint and other material fumes inside the original boxes will knock you out.

 

[konstrukt]

Re: My office showroom build-out. (IKEA Detolf, Klingsbo, Expedit, custom cabs & ligh

Just awesome! I subscribed to this thread.

 

[Pixelpiper]

Re: My office showroom build-out. (IKEA Detolf, Klingsbo, Expedit, custom cabs & ligh

Didn't have time for a tripod setup yet, so I had to push the camera to ISO 800 with a low shutter speed, resulting in way more grain and blur than I'd like, but fine for a sample.

 

[Rambler]

Re: My office showroom build-out. (IKEA Detolf, Klingsbo, Expedit, custom cabs & ligh

The DX05 background is in there too. But the floor and ceiling are custom. Hopefully I'll get the chance to whip out my real camera on a tripod to get some shots.

I've just brought Indy and Superman out of storage and onto their respective shelves for the first time. And it's about time. Both still need much better posing/futzing, but at least this will give them a chance to air-out. Wow, the paint and other material fumes inside the original boxes will knock you out.

How did I miss that? You really made that look amazing!!! Great work!!!

 

[Pixelpiper]

Re: My office showroom build-out. (IKEA Detolf, Klingsbo, Expedit, custom cabs & ligh

Some better random images from the latest changes/additions:

 

[Cimmerian Dragon]

Re: My office showroom build-out. (IKEA Detolf, Klingsbo, Expedit, custom cabs & ligh

Excellent set-up. I love the carpet in Dr. Jones' room.

I've been seeking decent glass housing for my display room, but given my location it seems shipping in several Detolfs is the only option. It drives me insane that trucking them to me will cost several times what the darn things are worth.

 

[Pixelpiper]

Re: My office showroom build-out. (IKEA Detolf, Klingsbo, Expedit, custom cabs & ligh

Rent a van, drive to IKEA, fill it up with Detolfs, come back home and sell them. Profit.

 

[Cimmerian Dragon]

Re: My office showroom build-out. (IKEA Detolf, Klingsbo, Expedit, custom cabs & ligh

Hm...I do have a few collector pals I could gouge mercilessly.

 

[ironstitch]

Re: My office showroom build-out. (IKEA Detolf, Klingsbo, Expedit, custom cabs & ligh

Some better random images from the latest changes/additions:

my god, these look amazing!!

 

[Pixelpiper]

Re: My office showroom build-out. (IKEA Detolf, Klingsbo, Expedit, custom cabs & ligh

I made some changes to the Indy shelf last week, replacing the uplight with a segment of 3 SMT LEDs covered by a 1/1 CTO lighting gel (stage/photo kind). The intention was to get a brighter uploaght and to make it more golden - I suppose I could have tried other gels from my sample book, but the CTO (color temperature orange) is what I had the most of and at hand then.

I've shot some images to play around with different corrections and shifts (subtle).