The final weekend

Saturday was a 12 or 14 hour day of setting up Star Wars figures. We turned on the music, we started putting figures on the shelves and didn't stop except to eat. Hundreds of 3 3/4" Hasbro figures were opened or unpacked from ziplocked baggies I had packed them in from the last Star Wars room. I had hoped that Saturday would be the day we'd get a lot of help, but it ended up being Heather and I solo for most of it. Craig was buying a car that day, John was working so Elizabeth couldn't get a ride over, Angie came...but we didn't have a ton of jobs that she liked to do at this point (it was just setting up Hasbro stuff mostly)...so she left early. Carol and Justin stopped by and helped for a couple of hours though.

We worked until sometime after 11pm on Saturday night. By the time we were done, we had unpacked and set up Wizards of the coast Minis, Galactic Heroes, the Burger King promo toys, more Bust Ups, the last of the Unleashed, Japanese Pepsi Bottlecaps, Titaniums, Micro Machines and just about everything else that I collect.

Sunday morning, we got up and had a quick breakfast before getting to work. Heather needed to start on the house cleaning, I continued to work in the Star Wars room. We had 2 or 3 empty shelves and my goal was to have zero by Monday morning. Craig and Toma showed up around 11 and did more unpacking and setting up. John and Elizabeth showed up sometime after that and helped out for a good 4 hours. John got a lot of clones done while Elizabeth unpacked and set up my Master Replicas mini sabers.

Craig watched the football game and handled one of the unsung jobs of the setup, recycling all the packaging. When all was said and done, we had another 90 gallons of plastic and cardboard in the recycling bin, along with at least 10-15 hefty bags and several boxes of cardboard to recycle. There was also a stack of flat folded cardboard as high as the pool table, all waiting to be recycled.

Eventually, everyone had to go and we spent the rest of the day cleaning, vaccuuming, washing, windexing and spit shining the house for some visitors we have coming tomorrow. We wanted the place to be done and in top shape....and I'd say right now that it's as good as it can get.

Sure, there is still a closet full of toys to open and a guest room filled with even more, but I feel like we filled that Star Wars room up. It looks really good.


Is there more to do? Sure....but now we're not under deadline and we can just do it for fun on our own time clock now.

The home stretch

This week has been a mad rush to finish before Monday.

Heather and I worked every night this week except for two. Monday we put in at least two hours. John came over that day I think. Tuesday was a light day. Mostly I spent it taking out all the plastic packaging (ended up filling one 90 gallon recycle bin and still having some left over). Wednesday night we went out to dinner and a movie, so I didn't work that night. Some progress ended up being made that evening though, because she went into "Storeables" (which was below the movie theater in the mall) and we found these clear display risers on sale! They were on 9.74 each, but they only had 2. I ordered a dozen more and they said I could still have the sale price. As Borat would say: "Nice!"

Thursday, I got home late, so I didn't do a damn thing. I watched a TV show or two with Heather. It was a terrible night to take a break, but we did it anyway. It'll all work out.

On Friday night, I had a few folks over to work on the room. Angie showed up first, followed by Craig and Toma. Heather had made everyone some lasagna, salad and bread, so we took a nice dinner break to enjoy that. John showed up sometime around 9pm and after we all finished dinner we got back to work. Toma opened figures for us, Heather and Angie worked on two cases full of 12" figures while John and I worked on 3 3/4" Hasbro figures. Craig was in charge of the cabinet on the back wall where he is setting up the Emperor's shuttle landing. That is the one "diorama" type shelf I really wanted to do. The other one I kind of want to have is the Arena.

We all worked until just before midnight tonight. There's still a lot to do and by a lot, I mean...no way in hell will we ever finish. Check out some of the boxes still left to unpack. There's a whole closet full besides these:

Time to set up the toys

After months of working on the room, the actual shelving is finally done. It took all week, but over the last few days, the glass shelves have been put into all 8 of the wall cabinets and brackets have been installed into all 6 of the display cases. We put the glass into the display cases and started Windexing all the shelves and doors. I had to buy some 48" flourescent light bulbs for the display cases, which Home Depot had...but I still need a 60" flourescent bulb (a very hard size to find) that they don't have. I had to keep searching for that.

Saturday morning was kind of an errand day. I had a car appointment at 10am, so I dropped off my VW, picked up the loaner car and went down to Ikea to pick up another lamp (one of the 16 I bought was missing it's clamp hardware) and also another glass shelf or two. After that, I went to Home Depot looking for extension cords to wire in the cabinet lights. I was also looking for that 60" flourescent bulb, but they told me to try a store called Lamps Plus. Lamps Plus didn't have the light bulb I needed, but they did give me a piece of paper with some phone numbers of special light bulb stores on it. None of them were open over the weekend, so I headed back up to Seattle to pick up my car.

Once I had my car, I met John and Elizabeth for lunch (they were spending Saturday cleaning for a party, so they couldn't join us in the SW room setup). We went to Wal Mart after lunch and I looked for clear display risers to stack figures on like steps. Although I had seen them posted on Rebelscum several times, they didn't have any at this store. I went home to get started on the room.

By this point, it was 4 or 5pm. With just over a week to go until my deadline, it's time to finally begin setting up the toys.

Heather and Angie joined me in the Star Wars room and we got started setting up. I began with my favorite items I collect, the Gentle Giant busts. Here's a basic idea of how many boxes we opened (there were about 20 besides this stack).



Next, I worked on the Gentle Giant Bust ups. Lots more cardboard was produced for the recycling bin:



While I was working on those, Angie and Heather worked on opening other figures. Angie opened all of my Sideshow figures and Heather put together the Kotos. By the end of the night, all of the Gentle Giant stuff was out of the box (minus some bust ups I hadn't found yet) as well as all of the Sideshow figures and all of the Kotos.

Angie was having a little too much fun with the Sideshow figures and decided that Obi Wan needed to be posed like Merlin. Here he is in all his glory:




After Heather finished up with the Kotos, she set up all of the Unleashed figures in the center cabinet. They were looking pretty awesome and I wish I would have taken a picture.

At that point, we called it a night, it was after 10...and that was a nice long day.


Sunday morning, I got up and got back to work. Heather started with the Unleashed and then moved on to the 12" figures. When I finished with the Bust-Ups, I moved to unpacking. I started trying to figure out what was stored where, as my collection is all in cardboard boxes. Even though I tried to label it when I packed it up, my labels weren't all correct (I'd omit certain items from the labels of boxes I threw them into). We kept coming across more Unleashed, or more Bust-ups which all had to be added into the room.

We finished sometime after 10 or 11pm....a nice, long, productive weekend. Tomorrow, it's back to work Here's just a little taste of how the room is shaping up:

Much progress in the Star Wars room!

With the deadline looming, it was time to get to work. This has been a crazy, crazy week (I may update my regular blog about that sometime) but we've been doing work in the Star Wars room every night as soon as we get home from work because we're in the home stretch!

Tonight's job was putting the glass shelves into the cabinets. Started with the wall cabinets:




Next, it was time to make another trip to Ikea. Heather and I picked up 16 of these little clamp lights (Clamp! Clamp!) that will hang off the cabinets as pictured below:





There are 8 cabinets (16 lights). Here's what one of the finished products looks like:






Once that was done....it was time to put the shelves into the glass display cases. Only got one done tonight, but it's looking pretty sweet. Sneak a peek!