IKEA Display case

Once you finish building a scale model, what do you do with it? You put it in a nice display! After I finished my first model, I commandeered a shelf on one of our bookcases for it. Of, course, ss the number of models kept growing, so were the shelves I used.

After a point, my wife started to protest, as there was no longer room for her (also growing) book collection. So, we decided to get a separate display case for the models. A quick measurement of the living room showed us that there was some space for it. So I started searching for a cheap solution that would look nice…

A solution that I see a lot in the Facebook modeling groups that I am a member of is the DETOLF display cabinet from IKEA. It is made out of glass and looks really nice. It only has 4 shelves but is it relatively easy to add 4 more (I actually did that for the one my daughter uses to keep her collection of memorabilia). The problem is, even with the extra selves, after a few months it would not be able able to fit my growing collection. So, I looked for an alternative.

My next thought was to get (another) BILLY bookcase together with glass selves. But the standard BILLY bookcase is only 28 cm deep and it too would not be able to hold many models. But then, I noticed that IKEA also sells a deeper version of the BILLY: 40 cm deep, 80 cm wide and 192 cm tall. This looked ideal, so I went for it.

Along with the bookcase, I got a couple of DIODER LED light strip sets and a couple of MORLIDEN aluminium/glass doors. Finally, I also got a BILLY add-on unit to add an extra self on top. It was not actually necessary but I wanted to keep the same look as the other 4 BILLY bookcases in our living room (I did mention that my wife has a lot of books). Plus, it helps to hide the power supplies of the LED lights.

I did not use the 4 selves that BILLY comes with. Instead, I went to our local hardware store and asked them to cut for me 8 glass panes (76 x 37 cm, 6 mm thick) in order to use them as selves. I ended up using only the 6 of them but I kept the extra 2 for the future.

I think it came up nicely. It looks elegant and it fits the general look of our living room!

Parts Needed