DJ Mauls Ultimate Toy Room Tour Part 1

Inspired by Steve Sansweets online video tour of Rancho Obi Wan, I decided to tackle the process of organizing and photographing my Star Wars Toy Room to take my fellow collectors and Star Wars geeks on a virtual tour as well.

While my collection obviously is NOT as extensive as Mr. Sansweets, and I dont have the use of video (yet) only still pictures, Im hoping it will be at least somewhat entertaining.

So...welcome to DJ Mauls Star Wars Toy Room Tour, Part One!

To begin, let's examine the process of building the room itself: (to view the pictures simply click the links.)

This is what the room looked like before.

When I first moved into this house, the basement, while large, was unfinished, only studs marked where walls had once been. Still, I needed space to store my stuff, so I adopted one section, slammed up some cheap shelves, and set it up as you see in that picture. No walls, no ceiling, cheap lighting, ...a real mess.Eventually, years later, we got under way to re-furbishing the entire basement, including the area that was to eventually become my Toy Room.

Here are just a few of the "room in progress" pictures:

Room in progress 1

room in progress 2

room completed.

Now that the room was finally done, it was time to start adding in my collection.

The very first item I put up in the room was this one:A Custom Made Darth Vader Light Switch Cover that was made from a cheap foam rubber Halloween mask I found at a CVS. I painted the actual switch cover red, cut a hole for the switch to come through above Vaders nose, and glued the mask to the switch plate. Came out rather well I think.

I wont drag out the process, but obviously before I could set up the toys, shelves and display cases needed to be added. This was done over the course of a few weeks, some from old shelves and bookcases Id already had, and some newer ones purchased especially for the room.because of the mish mosh of shelves, i decided to keep things uniform looking and painted them all white.Next, boxes were dug out of the attic, toys opened and cleaned, and the process began of finding everything a home.

Eventually the collection was unpacked, and This is the room now completely set up.This toy room ALSO doubles as my office space; This is the room view from the other side and you can see my work desk and chair in the far corner.So not only does this room allow me to store & display my toys, but since I also use it for business purposes its a tax write off! Sometimes it all just works out.

Ok, just a few more pictures for now, the REAL tour will begin in the next installment, but I'll leave you with a bit of a teaser:

1: Above the door, a Darth Maul Saber that I hung up with some wire, here is another view from a further angle. I actually just found this saber this October (2005) at a Halloween shop. It's an old Ep. I toy that somehow wound up on the shelf many years later. the package was almost destroyed and later I found out one side of the blade wont light up, but for 2 bucks it wasnt a bad deal, damaged or not. Still looks cool.

Just a few more pics for now, I'll leave you with a few posters:20th Anniversary ROTJ poster on back of the door

Dark Horse Comics Vader poster also on the back of the door.

Episode III Poster Book Posters of Obi Wan & Yoda

Episode III Poster Book Posters of Anakin & Vader

Clone Wars figures poster

I dont really COLLECT posters, most of these posters were either free giveaways or came with a magazine, My Insider / Fan Club subscription or something like that.In the case of the Episode III Poster book, I couldnt resist when i found it marked down from it's $9.99 price tag to just 50 CENTS!

This marks the end of the first chapter in my tour. I've only scratched the surface here, and I will do my best to get the future installments up as soon as I can.

Next leg of the tour will take us a bit deeper, getting into some of my action figs including some vintage 77 ones.See you again soon for part two.