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As time continues to roll on, it feels a bit odd writing up these updates, considering how far along I am now, but how far back I feel like I should write so I don’t skip too much time.  Folks who have been following along, know that in Part Three I talked about the sudden appearance of 7 feet of copper piping on one wall, and how that threw my entire display idea into flux.  The builder accommodated nicely by walling around those pipes and the wall-mounted ventilation system, giving me some room to work with.

At this point, we’ve been living in the house for about two months, and the room is starting to come together.  Click the read the rest of the story link below for the full details.

The initial flood into the house created some chaos, especially in my office.  When we first moved in, I got a desk and review station set up right away, so I could continue to do site updates as necessary (priorities, man!).  But I really needed to plan out my display space throughout the room.  My first real challenge was my Stack On! cabinets.  Folks who have been reading the site for a while, or have been listening to the What’s on Joe Mind podcast have heard me talk about these cabinets before, which are fairly compact cabinets meant to hold screws, nails, or other small instruments.  A very long time ago…as in probably 20 years ago, I discovered they were also perfect for holding G.I. Joe figures.  Interestingly, even the 3 3/4″ G.I. Joe figures have drifted closer to 4″ now, but they still fit relatively well.  Sometimes accessory storage needs to be somewhat creative, though.

Anyway…  as of this point I have a few thousand G.I. Joe figures, which requires about 37 of these cabinets (each cabinet holding anywhere from 60 figures to closer to 120 figures) and those take up a ton of very valuable wall space.  Because of this, creativity was key.  I needed easy access to them for comparison pictures with my reviews…so what to do?

Well, one benefit of these cabinets is that they’re designed to be wall-mountable, so I purchased some heavy duty wall hangers, and went to work.

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I used the wall and used the closet with the air filtration system to store the majority of the cabinets, and it worked well, though I find myself holding my breath a bit wondering where they are going to expand to when figures continue to be released going forward.

Along with the cabinets, I sucked it up and made my first wall shelf purchase as well, lining the wall above my desk with display shelves to start storing my toys.  It was considerably more expensive than I imagined, and as time has gone on, I’ve found myself sacrificing some toys to the eBay gods in order to continue expanding on them, but things are coming together.  A couple stops at Home Depot gave me a nice 9 foot section above the desk.

I figured that I should probably get some decorations going, too, if this was truly going to be my G.I. Joe room.  I didn’t want this to just be a room chock full of shelves and more shelves with no “life” to it, so I had purchased and acquired some posters.  I decided to get a couple of those up as well, just to add some flavor.  Among the posters were three G.I. Joe: Retaliation posters that I had grown to appreciate.

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Things were moving along nicely.  But then came the day that I had feared the most.  The day we had to close our storage unit.

Truth be told, we could have kept the storage unit open as long as we wanted, but we really could not continue to absorb a $125 per month fee just to store my crap.  So, with a heavy heart, I rented the U Haul and went to retrieve my stuff.  I say “with a heavy heart” because I knew once I brought my stuff back in, I would grow completely overwhelmed and progress on the toy room would likely scream to a shuddering halt.

I was right.

I spent a large chunk of a Saturday unloading the 10′ U Haul, and once I stepped back to appreciate the amount of sheer crap I had accumulated over the past three decades of collecting, I was just about ready to throw in the towel.

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With this monstrous pile of stuff facing me in the eyes every time I tried to work in this room, would I ever have the drive to dig through it?  When would I find the time?  Will this feature be delayed for two years until I can make heads or tails of this?

You’ll just have to keep reading to find out…  ; )

You can play catch up with this series at the following links: