Pipe Shelves - Introduction

The Problem

I have been running out of space to display my collection of stuff for a while now. Mostly, I blame the lego collector's edition Star Wars kits. I didn't really start collecting them until recently and was forced to pay a hefty premium for the Lambda Shuttle (my favorite ship). Ever since, I've started collecting all of them that interest me (sorry sandcrawler, but you're not that interesting).

The Solution

What I think I'm going to do is to reclaim an entire wall in my office. Right now there is just a big map on it.... so mostly un-utilized space. Of course I could have bought some shelves, but where's the fun in that? I settled on the 'iron pipe' style of shelving because I like the way it looks and it is relatively cheap. Doing so let me customize the shelf heights and what not. 

The scope of the project has been slowly spiraling out of control and is taking far longer than expected..... mainly because I have been using it to work out all the details for this website. Pipe shelves led me to integrated lighting. Integrated lighting lead me to a pipe lamp. The pipe lamp lead me to the faucet dimmer. From there, I still want to integrate a desk into the design of the shelving unit to give me more workspace. Since I'm making the shelves too, I figured "why not make built in shelf lights too?". As of this writing, here is what my plan looks like:

The good news is that I think I have it the way I want it. All the pipes have been ordered and have been sitting in the corner for a while now.

So here are my planned features:

1. built in desk with drawers

2. dimmable accent lighting

3. in shelf lighting (rgb led strips)

4. worn look wood shelves

It has been a little slow going; mostly I've been having issues trying to get the film production down. I can sometimes be a bit of a perfectionist when it comes to these things.... some of these things at least.

Now even more good news, I have part 1 complete, which covers the design process to making the dimmer work.