Bunk Room: The Cool Wall

[Mad Ax]

A little side-project I've been working on, one that originally filled me with excitement and, thanks to the events of the last fortnight, now fills me with a sense of dread 

A couple of weeks ago we moved our daughter into the front bedroom, and that left us with a spare.  Since the pandemic has changed the face of the world, and I now work from home full time (or as I'm now starting to think of it, until I can find a company that's prepared to let me use an office again), and despite being mid-April it still hasn't warmed up enough for me to be using my studio in the workshop as an office for 8 hours per day, we figured it made perfect sense to put a desk in the old spare room.  And while we were at it, a bunk bed.  Oh, and since the wife is now using the workshop to do woodwork, the studio is getting full of dust and my display cars are getting filthy, so how about putting up some shelves indoors for them to go on?

This is just a quick little story of how I came to install some shelves, using lessons learned from last time I put up this kind of shelving in my workshop.

We begin with this wall, neatly repainted in paint from B&Q.  There's about 6 coats of different coloured paint and some ancient wallpaper under all that, the wall itself is some kind of plasterboard.  I'm not sure if it's original - the house is 100 years old and most of the walls are mudpack over brick, but there's no brick in this wall.  It's possible this room was just part of the original landing and the stud wall was added in later.

Anyway, that won't be a problem since I won't be adding anything too heavy - just Tamiya cars and some scalers, and most of the force is directly down, with only a little outwards force applied at the top.  With the right screw fittings, we can fit just about anything there.

I added these bits of masking tape to the skirt to help space out the vertical rails:

I went for a spacing of 140mm between the two vertical rails that make a pair - that's the same as I used on my previous Cool Wall and works well even for small stuff like SWB M-chassis.  This time I went with 470mm for each pair, compared to the 440mm I'd used previously, as it gave me just a little bit extra space between cars.  I found some touring cars and scalers would come into conflict if they were on the same level.

Then I stuck the some cars on the ground to be sure I was happy with my spacing.  Total space was limited by the door to the right and the eventual finishing point of some bookshelves that will go on the left, so I didn't really have much leeway to go beyond 470mm without dropping down to 3 columns.

To make quicker work of marking out the holes, I measured 140mm on my small level and marked it.

[Mad Ax]

Step 1: insert wall screw into wall.  Failed.

Turns out there was actually some solid wood behind the plasterboard here.  Which wasn't a bad thing, as that meant I could put a proper wood screw into it.  From this point out I pre-drilled every hole just to check if there was any solid wood that I could use.  It's possible that this wall is actually made of a kind of plaster lath instead of plasterboard, which has wooden slats and is better for screwing into.

These wall screws are made of the same kind of metal as an SRB gearbox and are about as much fun to use.  They provide good grip into plaster or plasterboard and give something solid that a wood screw can be turned into.

First pair fitted.

10 minutes later I looked around and panicked.  "Oh no, I've left the lights on in my Skyline.  Wait a minute, that's been on the shelf for at least six months - the battery must be flat by now!  Wait a minute - the Skyline doesn't have a light kit.  It doesn't even have light buckets!!  What's going on!!??"

What was going on was, a shaft of sunlight was falling in through the window and making it look like the car's lights were on.

[Mad Ax]

All bottom columns fitted.  There's a lot of gappage at the bottom but that's where the monster trucks will go - either resting directly on the carpet or sitting on stands.  Monster trucks are a bit too big to hang off these wall shelves.

Once the bottom ones were in, the top ones soon followed.

Spacing is just right

A poorly-lit photo of how it looks right now.  There's not too much rhyme or reason to the layout yet, apart from bigger at the bottom, smaller at the top.  In the long term I hope to go back to my "rotating collections" idea but I've got so much space on this Cool Wall I'll probably end up with the same cars out every month but in different orders.

For now, I want to drop the lower shelves down one and put the stadium trucks there, then all the scale rigs above, then all the buggies, then all the various touring cars.  On the other hand, I'm not going to put too much effort into that right away as I have loads of other things taking priority - on the opposite wall to those cars is my new desk, which right now is an old and flimsy camping table.  I have 3 metres of beech worktop at the bottom of the stairs which is waiting to be chopped up and turned into a fitted desk, plus I'm also waiting on Ikea to get some more Billy Bookcase* back in stock so I can finished off the space at the end of the bunk bed.

*I've got an Iddle Billy, but I really need a Big Billy.  I considered bracketing the display with a Bitty Billy and maybe even fitting the bottom part of the walls with some Itty Bitty Billies but it was all starting to get a bit expensive (and looking too much like RCKick's new studio).  I went all the way into Ikea in Bristol on Tuesday to get the Big Billy because their website said they had some, but when I went there the warehouse was bare, and so Mad Ax had none.

[markbt73]

Looking good! For future reference, they make plastic versions of those screw-in wall anchors as well, and they're a lot easier to work with than the cast metal ones.

I like the idea of just using the shelf brackets without shelves to set the cars on, I wish I'd thought of that when I set up my display shelves. Oh well, next time.

[topforcein]

have you put a door stop on the floor as it looks to me if someone deceided to come 100 mph through that door some of them are gonna cop a unfortunate one

other than that it looks great

[Lee76]

That does look tidy. Though I was nervous reading through that lot, your opening statements gave the impression something bad was about to occur.. like drilling through a water pipe or all your cars falling off! So.. I assume those shelf brackets have the fixing holes, does it look like yo could fit some kind of safety tie to stop stray family members knocking them off? You’d better not have a cat...

[ruebiracer]

47 minutes ago, markbt73 said:

I like the idea of just using the shelf brackets without shelves to set the cars on, I wish I'd thought of that when I set up my display shelves. Oh well, next time.

Yeah, like that too! Everytime I see some vids of Gavin at RCkicks, I also think this will be the setup for my future hobby room wall...

But great success to get everything fixed correctly in the very old wall. Imagine 2 complete rails lifting off the wall! Horror scenario for us collectors...

[Robert5000]

This looks amazing! Congratulations on your new room! Eagerly awaiting more pics and posts!

[Mad Ax]

13 hours ago, topforcein said:

have you put a door stop on the floor as it looks to me if someone deceided to come 100 mph through that door some of them are gonna cop a unfortunate one

Yes - I have a spare doorstop somewhere, not fitted yet but it will go in place once I have the last shelving unit in and know exactly how much space I need for the monster trucks.

13 hours ago, Lee76 said:

You’d better not have a cat...

I don't have a cat, I don't have the level of self-confidence required to have such a condescending creature around me all the time  

13 hours ago, ruebiracer said:

Everytime I see some vids of Gavin at RCkicks, I also think this will be the setup for my future hobby room wall...

Bizarrely, Gavin is going back to Billy Bookcases in his new studio.  I considered doing the same but it was going to get expensive and only give me half as much storage space.  It would probably look better in a bigger room, but they would overpower my wall.

Thanks for the kind comments, I will add more photos once I've got some more work done and sorted the collection order out a bit but it probably won't be anytime soon, life is doing its best to bury me with stuff at the moment 

[Badcrumble]

Looking good @Mad Ax. Now, if I can convince Mrs BC that I can tear down and replace our garage, I'll be copying your idea...

[mongoose1983]

On 4/22/2021 at 1:07 PM, Mad Ax said:

 

Good idea. Actually, I'm using something similar in our TV room in here.

BY THE WAY... you definitely gotta let us know more about that six-wheeled Ford there. What is that? Looks pretty good from this angle

[Mad Ax]

@mongoose1983 The 6-wheeled Ford is the Truck of Many Wheels, which you can read all about here :

 

 

[FoxShot]

On 4/23/2021 at 9:49 AM, Mad Ax said:

 

I use Besta cabinets for my display, with linkable LED strip lights inside. i will also be doing 'diorama' backing for each one soon. Also cheaper than Billy I Think.