Are you looking for an aesthetically pleasing and cost-effective way to store your comic book collection? As someone who recently had to move their comic book collection to a larger room, I understand your dilemma. I too had to find a solution to store my comic collection without breaking the bank. In this article, I will share my experience of how I found a great storage solution for my comics.
So because I'm working from home a lot these days I've decided to switch to a bigger room but I had to take my comic collection with me.
Now my old room had horrible plastic garage type lock shelving and horrible ripped cardboard long boxes. Not a great look!
One of my wife's conditions of me moving to the larger room in the house was that I keep it nice and have some nice units to host my comic book collection.
With this in mind I started researching how I could store my comics in an aesthetically pleasing way 🙂
So I checked out things like Ikea units , unfortunately I couldn't find anything deep enough to take my long boxes.
I also looked at how I could build something for myself out of MDF and then maybe paint it, but I just don't have the tools and the know how do do something like that although would have been fun to try!
Then I stumbled on something. Kitchen units!
They're already painted, easy to assemble and come with shelves and if I wanted to put doors on I could!
I got these from my local B&Q which is just a hardware store, here's a link to what I bought :
Double Unit
GoodHome Caraway White Base unit, (W)1000mm
Single Unit
GoodHome Caraway White Base unit, (W)500mm
These 2 units only cost me £100 far cheaper than buying the MDF and building the bases myself!
I needed to store 12 long boxes so I picked a single unit and a double unit.
I bought some nice black plastic comic boxes from BCW to replace my old cardboard ones these were 50cm Length 20cm Width 28cm Height
Dimensions in inches Length (20inches) Width (8.inches) Height (11-inches)
I added a cm each side so the boxes could be pulled out easily and I wasn't jamming them in.
Once I assembled the kitchen units as you can see the comic boxes sat nice and snug within the unit, but once I put the shelf in there was a problem with the top of the unit.
There was a back brace on the unit that was hitting the top of the comic box and also I couldn't put the backing board of the unit in , but I wasn't too bothered about that I was more concerned about the brace.This was preventing the box from sliding all the way into the unit. I couldn't remove the brace as it was integral to the structure of the kitchen base unit.
So i decided to use a small L brace/bracket to angle the back brace so that the comic box could slide nicely underneath.
The kitchen units came with legs but I opted not to put them on I didn't want to mess around with facia/skirting boards.
With that sorted I could bolt the units together and all I needed was a top , as these units are designed to put a kitchen counter top on them I bought a piece of MDF and then asked a carpenter friend to cut and attach the top to the base units. Which he did for the price of a few beers !
I did use some of the L brackets/braces to strengthen up the shelves and the unit itself just to add a little bit of stability.But once the units were bolted together and the MDF top was put on these we're pretty solid!
I bought some hard wearing furniture paint to paint the top white , long boxes loaded and voila !
One nice looking comic storage unit ! Happy 🙂
I've also got a very nice workbench on top that I can use for my comic press and for comic cleaning and prep.I plan to get some silicone matting to protect the MDF on top and a cutting board.
If your looking to build some comic storage I would seriously consider kitchen units , they come in all shapes and sizes and with a little know how you can modify them to suit your needs!