What to Do With Minifigures? A Home Made Minifigure Display Solution!

If you've been reading this blog over the past few weeks, you'll know that I've jumped back into collecting LEGO minifigures, mostly thanks to discovering the Swapfig website.  Of course, it is one thing to collect all the minifigures...it is quite another to actually figure out how to store and/or display them!

Luckily, I had a plan - though the plan required quite a bit of work!

First, I had to build a workstation in my garage.  We moved into our new house about a year and a half ago, and while I love this house, I missed having a workshop in the garage like our old house had.  Therefore, when my wife decided to get some new doors in the upstairs, I knew I could take the old doors and turn them into a pretty nice work bench.

It took some doing, but here's the final result:

Not bad for a novice, right?

Literally one day after completing the work bench, I decided to put it through the paces by creating my own LEGO Minifigure display shelf.  I had a few requirements for my display shelf:
1.  I wanted each "slot" to be large enough to hold the black minifigure base that comes with every figure LEGO sells.
2.  I wanted some slots to have a double width - either to accommodate minifigures with large parts (such as Mermaid tails) or to be able to pair up two figures that "belong together."
3.  I wanted the shelf to hold a bunch of figures!
4.  I wanted to avoid using any nails or screws in the creation of the shelf.
5.  I wanted the shelf to be made of oak so that it would match most of the rest of the wooden stuff in my man cave.

After a lot of measuring (and a ton of cutting on my table saw), I was able to create a bunch of pieces that had to be put together much in the way one would assemble a puzzle.

It was definitely a moment of truth when I started the assembly, but luckily my measuring (and cutting) were true - everything fit wonderfully!

And now, I have plenty of room for many of minifigures (though not all of them - my collection is rapidly growing)!

Luckily, when we moved in our house the previous owners left a knick-knack shelf on the wall...  A shelf that I claimed right away for my LEGO figures - and as you can see, there is room on there for a few more at least...and then it'll be back to the new workshop to build yet another shelf!

If you want to see more of my "man cave" makeover, check out this entry over on my baseball-centric blog.