Designing the Nerd Cave–Modeling Workbench

    I’ve been buildling models since about the age of ten and I’ve had a model workbench everywhere I’ve lived since 1989.  I’m a huge military history buff and I used to build 1/35 scale armor models almost exclusively.  However, in the years since my kids were born, I’d gotten bored with them, had less time and all but lost interest.  They tended to be massive dust collectors and I had pretty much maxed out my skills on them.

     In the years before our house fire, I’d started dabbling in Warhammer, 40K, Lord of the Rings miniatures, spacecraft and large scale figures. I actually had a pretty nice Warhammer Vampire Counts army progressing. Key word: had.

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Designing the Nerd Cave or How my foray Into the world of unconventional sandbox design taught me to ALWAYS have a plan

     I’m a planner.  Sometimes that can be a bad thing.  I frequently succumb to what’s known as “paralysis by analysis.”  G.I. Joe claims “knowing is half the battle.”  For me, knowing I have this problem doesn’t always keep me from falling victim.  But in the case of my new Nerd Cave, I made a conscious & disciplined effort to keep that side of me down.  It’s not every day a guy’s wife tells him to take a whole room and do with it what he will (except, of course for hanging model airplanes) and I didn’t intend to squander the opportunity.

     A couple of weeks after my wife gave me carte blanche, we sold the headboard and mattress.  The room was empty.  It was time to start making the “making it happen” part happen. I sat down with a pen and paper.

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