When we moved into this house, I knew I would finally have enough space to devote to displaying my various collections.  For years, the vast majority of my treasures have remained in binders, boxes, folders, or tubs with only small portions being displayed here and there.  Unfortunately, to properly display everything, it’s going to take some serious time and resources to get everything in order.

To display my autographed 8x10s, I’ve had to buy and hang a TON of picture frames…which really look great hanging up as opposed to being inside gigantic binders.  Every time I walk downstairs I’m greeted by these pics and they always make me smile.

I had to seek out jersey display cases to bring my dream NBA showcase to fruition.  Now, my signed Larry Bird and Magic Johnson jerseys can trade barbs as they hang side by side.

Home Depot sells official OKC Thunder blue paint, so several evenings were devoted to bringing some boring gray walls to life.  Followed by that was the construction and staining of several sets of floating shelves to give my OKC and Michael Jordan collectibles an out-of-storage home for the first time ever.

Looming downstairs in large boxes, however, were 1,400+ Funko Pop!s that hadn’t seen the light of day in quite some time…and never in their entirety.  After conferring with The Lady Friend, I managed to secure free reign over a sizable bedroom upstairs to turn into my very first collectibles room.  Yes, I’d finally have a room dedicated solely to showing off my, well, toys.  Talk about a dream come true…

Typically when faced with the task of moving about 25 boxes of things up three flight of stairs, one does not find themselves particularly fired up to begin.  This, however, was not the case.  With each trip up the stairs with another box of collectibles, all I could think of was how incredibly happy this room would make me once it was complete.

When it came time to finally get down to drawing up the plans on how I was going to build the shelving system, I realized that I first needed to paint the walls.  When the house was built in the mid-70s, chair rail moulding had been run around the entirety of the room so I spent an afternoon extracting that mess.  While this shouldn’t have been that difficult of a task, trouble hit me square in the nose when I came across several finishing nails that had lucked out into being inserted directly into studs.  Who knew that removing practically headless 40+ year old nails from 40+ year old studs could make a 40+ year old man work up such a sweat but, phew, did it ever.  If I spoke more languages than just English I would have gladly used every foreign cuss word I could muster while yanking those steely bastards free.

The nail holes have all been patched, the surfaces have been lightly sanded, and painters tape is everywhere in preparation for the first big phase of Operation Collectibles Room.

“I love it when a plan comes together.”