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

[Pixelpiper]

Re: My office "showroom" build-out. (Detolf, Klingsbo, Expedit, custom cabinets & lig

I think I've shown some earlier images of my Bespin Duel shelf for the Detolf, but now that the parts are mostly complete, here's a closer look. Like every other shelf shown, this is available for sale.

The shelf is supposed to mimic the gantry hallway just before Luke flies out the window. The background image is available in my background thread, linked in my signature.

It starts with an MDF shelf with a rectangular floor cavity, then three segments of LED ribbon along the length. Electrical connections for the LEDs are part of the shelf and powered via the electrified rails on the Detolf (documented earlier in this thread).





A rectangle is masked out on 1/4" acrylic sheet (translucent white) and then painted with black acrylic paint.

 

[joda76]

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

Really nice job on that Piper.

 

[SvaNtaS]

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

Wow dude, your work is just impressing! This is some serious stuff! =) Really fun to watch the results and the progress!

 

[MrHector]

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

Dude! This is all awesome. I'm loving it. Hopefully one day ill be able to have a house and customize my own room.

 

[Gruff Old Bear]

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

This thread has been inspiring. Subscribed.

 

[Pixelpiper]

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

Thanks again for all the feedback, I'm happy someone's checking out the thread.

I've just added a few glass shelves to my wall-mounted Besta cabinet, IKEA Inreda, which were $5 each locally. This is probably a bit more than I would have paid having them custom made out of plate glass (not tempered), but they also come with nice fixing hardware which allowed me to do something special: Mount them on a front-sloping angle.



I've used double-sided tape to attach a plastic ridge to each shelf. The ridge is made from a strip of plastic moulding that's used for the bottom of the toe-kick on IKEA kitchen cabinets - you can get all manner of similar pieces of plastic at Home Depot and other stores.




The shelves will be home to my (growing) vintage diecast car collection. I've test fit the shelves here to make sure everything's working out ok. The local IKEAs never seem to have many of these shelves in stock at one time, so I'm not sure when I'll have the cabinet completed (14 shelves total). The plastic ridge is used as a stop for the back wheels of each car so that they don't roll down the shelf - it also works very well on the wheels of one side for a profile view.



For final display, the dinged up duplicates will be removed to a different unit, likely my Klingsbo vintage display.

 

[Pixelpiper]

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

While LEDs are "low energy" they're also generally low output - which is fine for display purposes. That said, I'm trying very hard to keep power consumption down to a minimum. At this time all my displays (shown here throughout the thread) are consuming exactly 38 watts - this includes the LEDs built into the Tumbler and the extras that I added to light up the interior (3 ribbon segments of 3 LEDs each). A few weeks ago it would have been closer to 48 but I've managed to cut down a little by eliminating some LED clusters. Today I shaved about a watt from the Hoth display, but my goal is to finish out the room's displays and shelves without going over 50w with everything at maximum brightness. That only leaves me another 12w of headroom so I'm going to have to be really stingy moving forward.

One of the biggest energy draws is actually my Batman logo - it eats up 6w on it own - bigger 5050 RGB LEDs... That's only 1w less than the entire 3-high Klingsbo glass shelving unit that has my vintage toys in it.

I'm not sure if I'll be able to keep to this self-imposed limit if I try to light up the diecast cars - I'm also at a bit of a dilemma on how to light them as I've tried a few ideas that worked fairly well but still weren't ideal. The double-sided tape used for the shelves on the diecast display is not going to cut it either, so in the next few days the shelves are all coming back down and the plastic supports are getting glued in place with Weldbond - silicone would work very well too, but it's a lot messier and stinks while curing.

 

[FullMetalHippie]

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

Hey Pixel, would you mind speaking to my wife about letting me proudly display my collection?

We're in the process of building a new home and it looks like my Hot Toys are going to be relegated to living in the unfinished basement. That way, guests won't realize what a geek she married.

Also, your Besta wall cabinet looks like it's half of a full sized cabinet. The one I saw on Ikea is around 94" long. Would you be able to fit 2 levels of sixth scale figures in it? Basically just one shelf all the way across with figures on top and below?

 

[Pixelpiper]

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

Hey Pixel, would you mind speaking to my wife about letting me proudly display my collection?

This is my office, so my wife doesn't mind and in fact prefers that I keep this kind of stuff in here, rather than taking up space in our currently unfinished basement. My friends all know I have a geek side and they seem to love that, some of them come check out the progress on the room quite regularly - most surprising of all is that some of the wives, which I'm also good friends with, love the space even more than my own wife and some of my male friends!

What my wife wishes is that I didn't spend so much time tinkering and planning, in general, but also specifically to this room. I've got a lot irons in the fire at the moment, including some deck/garden work and finishing up the final details of our son's room - he's only 7 months old though, so he doesn't mind.

The Besta you're looking at in my photos is the shelf-unit/height extension unit. It's shallow and easily mounted to the wall (includes some fittings to help with this).

https://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/40253905/#/50102143

$50 in the US, plus the Tombo doors which added another $100 for a total of $150. It has two wooden shelves per side and I just recently picked up some Inreda glass shelves at $5 each, which includes fittings.

Also, your Besta wall cabinet looks like it's half of a full sized cabinet. The one I saw on Ikea is around 94" long. Would you be able to fit 2 levels of sixth scale figures in it? Basically just one shelf all the way across with figures on top and below?

That's not going to quite work out for most 1/6 figures. Maybe some. The cavity is only 22 3/4" to 7/8" high, and using glass shelves (the thinnest) you'll lose almost 1/4" of that which means there will be less than 12" above and below the shelf. The best you can hope for is about 12.5" above or below and 10" for the other half. So unless you have a collection of 1/6 Hobbits or other shorter figures, you're not going to be able to fill it all up.

 

[FullMetalHippie]

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

Ha. Yeah, I figured it may not be tall enough to fit two rows of figures. I'm sure I'll find something suitable. Thanks for the quick response and well done on your custom space, sir. Most impressive.

 

[Y4NK33 PL4N3T]

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

Thanks again for all the feedback, I'm happy someone's checking out the thread.

I've just added a few glass shelves to my wall-mounted Besta cabinet, IKEA Inreda, which were $5 each locally. This is probably a bit more than I would have paid having them custom made out of plate glass (not tempered), but they also come with nice fixing hardware which allowed me to do something special: Mount them on a front-sloping angle.



I've used double-sided tape to attach a plastic ridge to each shelf. The ridge is made from a strip of plastic moulding that's used for the bottom of the toe-kick on IKEA kitchen cabinets - you can get all manner of similar pieces of plastic at Home Depot and other stores.




The shelves will be home to my (growing) vintage diecast car collection. I've test fit the shelves here to make sure everything's working out ok. The local IKEAs never seem to have many of these shelves in stock at one time, so I'm not sure when I'll have the cabinet completed (14 shelves total). The plastic ridge is used as a stop for the back wheels of each car so that they don't roll down the shelf - it also works very well on the wheels of one side for a profile view.



For final display, the dinged up duplicates will be removed to a different unit, likely my Klingsbo vintage display.

Sweet display.

Glad I found this post b/c I have the same IKEA besta units wall mounted and I've been exploring shelves and door units for display purposes.

I have a question about the glass doors. Those are the Tombo doors right? From the description on their website it seems they are used to showcase prints, not solely as a glass door. Since there's a piece of fabric in there can it be easily removed? Sorry, I'm a bit confused about the exact product and I just want a simple glass door that fits these Bestas.

 

[Pixelpiper]

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

The Tombo comes with a thin hardboard (think thin MDF) square which fits into the frame - that lets you color the doors white or another color on the reverse, or sandwich your own artwork between it and the glass. You either don't install the board or it pops out easily, I can't remember which.

Maybe about half the people here in the forum using Besta are doing so with the Tombo doors - the others mostly use Vassbo which have a much thicker wooden frame. Or Vara is also available with an even thicker frame. What you lose with the intrusion of the frame you save in cash, because those doors are only $15 each in the US compared to $50 for Tombo. $45 and $25 in Canada respectively, while Tombo is the same at $50. Ouch!

 

[Y4NK33 PL4N3T]

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

The Tombo comes with a thin hardboard (think thin MDF) square which fits into the frame - that lets you color the doors white or another color on the reverse, or sandwich your own artwork between it and the glass. You either don't install the board or it pops out easily, I can't remember which.

Maybe about half the people here in the forum using Besta are doing so with the Tombo doors - the others mostly use Vassbo which have a much thicker wooden frame. Or Vara is also available with an even thicker frame. What you lose with the intrusion of the frame you save in cash, because those doors are only $15 each in the US compared to $50 for Tombo. $45 and $25 in Canada respectively, while Tombo is the same at $50. Ouch!

Thanks for the quick and detailed reply.

Yeah, the price of the Tombo's is steep and I'll need 6 of them but they'll be worth it I think. It's good to know the insert can be removed or not installed.

I have the Vara doors for my ground units & I love 'em, but those cabinets will house equipment and used for other media storage.

 

[Cingen]

Re: My office "showroom" build-out. (Detolf, Klingsbo, Expedit, custom cabinets & lig

I think I've shown some earlier images of my Bespin Duel shelf for the Detolf, but now that the parts are mostly complete, here's a closer look.

The shelf is supposed to mimic the gantry hallway just before Luke flies out the window. The background image is available in my background thread, linked in my signature.

It starts with an MDF shelf with a rectangular floor cavity, then three segments of LED ribbon along the length. Electrical connections for the LEDs are part of the shelf and powered via the electrified rails on the Detolf (documented earlier in this thread).



Here's (sort of) what it looks like lit up:





If I had known that I would be getting my hands on some white translucent acrylic before I started this, I would have created a ridge in the cavity to flush-fit an acrylic rectangle. Because I didn't know that, this was initially designed to be used with a standard Detolf glass shelf onto which I'd be painting a white rectangle on the underside. But as luck would have it, I came across some free acrylic and produced this top cover to be used instead of the glass. I masked out a rectangle and then painted the areas outside with black acrylic paint. Ignore the fingerprints, the matte black picks them up like crazy, but thankfully they wipe right off.




Here it is installed on the shelf:




And powered on:



The background is being re-printed because I shuffled some shelves around, but I'll post an update when it's newly installed.

Any chance to show a quick mockup of this with the figures? Really interested in this..

 

[Pixelpiper]

Re: My office "showroom" build-out. (Detolf, Klingsbo, Expedit, custom cabinets & lig

Any chance to show a quick mockup of this with the figures? Really interested in this..

I'll try to get a shot in the next couple of days with something on it - don't know if it will be Luke.

If I were to remake this I would change a number of things to possibly make it better, but this will have to do for my own display. Things like putting the LED strips perpendicular in smaller segments, making the whole thing a little wider (the smaller dimension) and counter-sinking only a small piece of plexi instead of using a big square.

 

[Pixelpiper]

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

Here are some shots of the Bespin Duel flooring with a temporary figure in Luke's place to show the effect of the up-lighting. Unfortunately I didn't have time to use a tripod which is really necessary to get the best images in a lighting situation such as this.



This image does a decent job of showing the effect, but it's a lot nicer in person. When Luke is in his place I'll go the extra mile and use a tripod as well as color balance to make sure the images match reality more closely.

 

[Pixelpiper]

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

Here's the older test pic again, showing the background - it doesn't have the new updated floor panel, but you can see how the background also gets some of the light, making it look like the panels in the distance are also lit.



A new background is being printed for the updated shelf which should look even better than the old one as it's going to be on a more luster paper.

 

[Y4NK33 PL4N3T]

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

Love this thread!

Edit: Found the answer to the question I had for you

 

[Pixelpiper]

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

[test images removed]

 

[Solo_bones]

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