The big collection move

The move is finally over, and this is where I
will put all the before, after and during pictures:

Aside from a lot of planning the very first step in this move was actually taking some new pictures of the big standees
and finding a way to store them, I had already decided long ago that they would not be put back up after the move, I do love
them but they cover up too much of the collection and makes cleaning a lot harder.

With them out of the way, let’s take a look at the BEFORE pictures.

—BEFORE—

The hallway:

The collection in all it’s glory:

The kitchen:

Personally I didn’t mind the kitchen at all, aside from the floor it was in quite good condition being from the mid 90’s

The… bedroom? workroom? playroom?

This is where I spend by far the most time, it was quite crowded with items before the move as you can see.
What you can’t see is how badly this room needed a renovation but it will be clear in later pictures…

—BEGINNING OF CHAOS—
Around April and forward

This was a big project in itself, I documented the condition of every SFC game and their box,
I also tested every single one at least a few minutes!

This is something that I always wanted to test at least once, I filled up the SFC shelves with all kinds of games!
I sent the picture to a friend and he was quite worried about the new look, haha.

Enough fun, time to prepare it all for the move.

There are very few pictures of the actual packing process but I do like these ones.
Those roll-wagons have constantly come to good use during the move!

Excluding Xeno soundtracks, these should be most of my soundtracks, I finally had the chance to take
some photos of them:

If you ever wondered what’s in those red boxes at the bottom of my shelves this is the answer, for ONE of them:

I don’t collect them but these are the steel boxes that I happen to have:

A lot of missing pictures from taking down the collection but I saved Xeno for last and as you might know
I tried to fit every Xeno item into the empty shelves but as you also might know it was doomed to fail…

Oh well, it was a good attempt!

With the collection spread out in 100 moving boxes I could really start to feel the move closing in

Shelves, boxes, things everywhere!

Somewhere around this time should be my first visit to the garage, sawing my poor poor shelves to fit under the new
ventilation channel.

—THE TEMPORARY APARTMENT—
Around June, sun and heat

Phew, as I already said in an earlier post this was the start of the second worst week of my life
(when it comes to physical labor at least)

I was quite happy to see the apartment was about the same size, if not bigger than my own so storing
everything would not be a problem. Also being on the bottom floor I saved a lot of time not having to use
the elevator constantly.

Last things to get moved was the sound and computer, you always need those!

The 12 foot console shelf massacre, it has served well!

With the shelf and everything else moved you can finally see how badly this room needed a renovation!

Same goes for the old bathroom!

And goodbye kitchen!

Luckily I could store some items in the closets and part of the game room, heavy things like speakers,
CRTs, receiver, lose shelves etc. In total there was half a ton I didn’t have to move.

Time sure went by fast in the temporary apartment, I did manage to get some play time in, mainly on the
Seiken densetsu collection. In total I only unpacked about 10 boxes during the stay, I will miss how easy
it was to clean! What a vacation in that sense, haha.

The biggest time and energy sink of all must have been “sanding” and painting all the shelves, well over 100 hours over less than 10 days…

Not too many pictures during that time, I was so focused on the painting and wanted to get as much as possible done during the sunny hours

Just moving them back and forth to the balcony was a pain!
But in the end very worth it, as you can see in some of the pictures they really needed
that new paint, I’m not too confident in my painting skills but they all turned out great!
In fact, what I lack in conficence I make up for in time spent and care taken to every detail,
something a proffesional painter (or any employee) just can’t do reasonable to make a profit
so the end result is better than the paintwork in the apartment etc.
(I’m rambling, but the painting really was a big deal and very exhausting, and backbreaking)

After all that I finally had some well deserved rest, and as said played some Seiken
and celebrated my birthday in the mess.

Next up was buying A LOT of new items/material needed before the return move,
my family questioned the decision to do that before moving back but I still feel it was the right
choice having everything at hand and ready as soon as possible.

Everything from new furniture to plastic game protect boxes and a new wagon to move the moving boxes and big shelves on.

Then, another trip to the garage

Aaand back to the painting…

Much easier work this time though but it does look a bit crazy to need all of that for the new setups!

Not every detail is here but another thing I had to do was change out all the plugs/contacts on my ceiling lamps.

—THE RETURN—

The return move was really close by now and since I would have less time to move back than out I needed to store as
much as possible at my mother’s place, luckily she lives really close, right between my ordinary home and temporary apartment!
Still, no easy task but the new wagon worked like a charm outdoors and it could hold up to 12 smaller moving boxes or
8 big ones at a time! getting it into elevators and turning indoors was a pain though, also I insisted on covering it up
every trip since it was the rainy season and to keep the boxes from moving around.

In the end I managed to move everything but the actual collection and big shelves to my mother,
she was mostly on a trip during this time and didn’t mind the total mess, haha.

And suddenly the big day was here! I must say I was very nervous and excited to see my own home again.
My first feeling was that everything looked half as big as I remembered, probably thanks to the new dark floors,
and secondly was all the minor details, misses, annoyances.
I was quite upset about some things they had done or in some cases not done but I solved most of it and looked past some
and overall it all looked amazing.

Hard to capture the green color but I am very happy with my choice and if you compare to the old wall… wow.

After a first cleaning of the place it was time to get busy, I really wanted to drill these holes first of all,
if there is anything hateful, it’s drilling in these concrete walls.

The start of my new console shelf!

Me and my brother managed to move ALL the big shelves during the first day, that was quite a feat, still can’t believe we managed that!

Preparing something, not food in the kitchen

I mainly worked in the apartment during the days, and moved things during evening/night since others moved in at the same and used
a moving company I didn’t want to occupy and fight about the elevator with them.

Things getting crowded with boxes and “ordinary” furniture.

A place to sleep and soon after a computer.

A few days later the temporary apartment was finally empty and all cleaned up, probably more so then when I moved in

It was quite relieving to have one place less to think about and finally be able to focus all time into getting things in place.
This is however around the time I started to go mad from the lack of space, not finding that ONE thing that I constantly needed,
having to move 40 boxes just to get one thing in place etc.
Not to mention that more than one third of my items still was at my mothers place…

Oh no! But at least we have good sound again, that really helps!

A few missing pictures of the construction but time to cover up the windows again

And then cover up the covers with cover, I didn’t bother with new paint on the walls
in the collection room since you wont see ANY of it anyway…

Strangely I didn’t take any good photos of my worst enemy this move, the ventilation channel going right over and in the corner of my Xeno shelves…
Anyway, time to cover it up to!

As you can see, the channel didn’t go the full length of the room but I decided to extend it for symmetry sake.
It’s hard to tell but all along the ceiling is a small panel holding the black cloth/textile in place

With all that covered I could finally put up the Xeno shelves and finally confirm 100% that they fit the new measurements
Also, the soldering iron had to come out for the next upgrade:

This was a big upgrade, finally having some real light in these deeper shelves!

Next up is the other side of the room and lovely SFC shelves

This time a bit reinforced/stabilized. They need about 2 inches of space behind them thanks to outlets etc.

Next was something I had planned to do…for the last 5+ years, a small panel at the top of the shelves to match the
bottom design and cover up the cords and cables for the lamps

Same procedure for the next shelf:

Oh no, that time AGAIN:

With all cables in place the finally shelf can also find its place.

All finished up:

(That last annoying gap is still unsolved)

The details of this next project was not 100% planned out beforehand and the pictures can be a bit confusing since everything
is so dark but keep scrolling and they will find their use!

At this time I was done with all the preparations of the collection and moved all game related moving boxes back in there

It was time to focus on the rest of my home and start to bring the last items back from mom.

Shelves up, consoles temporarily stored!

These ones in place, I had to drill a few new holes to make them more effective for what I want to store.

The ultimate hiding spot for the big standees, in a corner on a small platform

Meanwhile in the kitchen, the sorted LEGO shelves have rolled in!

Time for all the consoles and accessories to hide somewhere:

So that is where I put those, haha!

This was supposed to be a very simple new retro-setup but it did give me some trouble later while plugging it all in
…cheap third party cables… and not cheap but a bad AV switch made it a lot harder…
The end result later is at least just what I wanted, a rolling retro setup that you can lie down and play or
roll around in the front of the couch!

By now it almost looked like a home over here and it was time to get back into the collection, first up…more consoles and cables

Actually, before that, there was a THIRD trip to the garage and my own smaller balcony, there were a few missing details that
needed to be sawed and painted, you see them lying around in this mess:

I know this will look like a total hazard and pain to handle but it went quite smooth

Aside from a few obvious cables going in and out of the setup nothing lies on the floor and nothing really sticks out
when viewed from the front, of course I need two full retro setups in my home…

With that, we are finally ready for…GAMES

This is what those odd shelves were for, the Tales of collection!

Next up, let’s cover that new nice paint that I spent so much time on!

I don’t think I have ever showed this before but all games actually stands on bubblewrap, probably pointless but it makes me feel better…

XENO time!

Trying to figure out if and how everything will fit in the new smaller shelves.

A lot more cramped and harder to dust than before but I made it, everything but one figure made it, also everything is better arranged
with a GEARS shelf, Episode I shelf, Episode II shelf and Episode III shelf, love it!

Some technology in place and the new and highly wanted soundtrack shelf right next to the CD-player!
I was a bit sceptical at first and have considered this solution before but it turned out great in the end, it doesn’t cover the
shelf behind much at all.

A lot of the big/limited editions coming up, some with the exact same placement as before:

Also, the red storage boxes are all in place and freed up a lot of space in the room

Next, SFC:

Only two pictures! A shame, a was in a real flow that day, about 70% of the games have the same placement
but a few ones have never been in the shelves at all (!) I finally removed the surround speaker that stood in there before.
Another detail delayed for years.

Strategy/RPG sibling games will be in the back shelf

Speaker and the entire shelf in place!

Like I said, I was really going on and on that day and kept filling up the shelves,
a few pictures during the Playstation shelf at least:

And boom! The collection was 95% complete suddenly, a lot of moving box folding going on on the balcony between pictures, haha.

This is not the final tour just yet… but basically!
I get confused looking at them all so there might be some duplicates/similar ones ahead.

I was sooo happy, tired, exhausted after staring at game titles and arranging them all day but after a nap I got some energy again
and used it to put up all the NON-RPGs in the other room:

With that I was more or less done!
All that remained was some minor things over the next few weeks up until today when all is done!

What a journey, more than half a year of this, PHEW.

If you bothered to check all these pictures I really hope they gave some inspiration
and maybe a crazy idea or two, a lot of behind the scenes stuff and questionable solutions
that I usually won’t show but it all works out for me and looks great in the end so be sure
to check the final tour below, I think it all proves you can turn an ordinary apartment into
quite a nice and unique place:

—FINAL TOUR—

The entrance: