🔑 From BrickCon to Arklow: The Real Work Begins
After the excitement of Episode 1, where we finally got the keys to our new home in Arklow and exhibited at Dublin BrickCon 2025, this week marked a major milestone — the first full week inside the new Redmond’s Forge LEGO Museum.
The warehouse may have been empty on Monday morning, but by the end of the week it had started to feel like the beating heart of Ireland’s first LEGO Museum.
🚛 Load 1 – Unloading Dublin BrickCon
The van was packed with displays, MOCs, tables, crates, and a whole lot of hope.
Huge thanks to Enterprise Rent-A-Van South Dublin Branch, who made it effortless to get everything from Tallaght to Arklow.
Three days for under €150 — fantastic value and absolutely reliable for a build of this scale.
The Escape from Exogorth MOC made it down safely, sitting proudly on its new B&Q trolley dolly.
This simple €60 platform (rated for 400 kg) has already proven a life-saver — it will permanently stay under the MOC to make moving it around the warehouse a breeze.
🪑 IKEA Runs & Assembly Chaos
Next came a trip to IKEA, where we picked up:
- 12 tables – €35 each
- Billy shelves – €65 each
- Storage crates – €9 each
The back of the van looked like a Swedish flat-pack puzzle.
We unloaded and assembled everything with a power drill and screwdriver combo from The Range Liffey Valley (under €60, and absolutely worth it).
By the end of the day, 12 sturdy tables stood ready — the foundation of the museum’s future city and display zones.
🎨 Painting, Walls & TJ O’Mahony
One of the first cosmetic jobs was removing and repainting the infamous pink wall.
All paint and materials came from TJ O’Mahony Arklow, our new local favourite.
Being only minutes away is both a blessing and a temptation — it’s too easy to pop in for “just one more tin of paint”!
(Quick note: none of these mentions are sponsored, the only discounts come from Redmond’s Forge trade accounts with B&Q and TJ O’Mahony.)
🧩 Baseplates, Layouts & Organisation
Once the tables were ready, we started placing baseplates and sketching out the first LEGO City and Modular layouts.
Rows of green, blue, and grey plates began defining roads, parks, and coastal sections — the first visual hint of what the finished museum will look like.
Load 2 brought in flat-packed LEGO boxes and filed instruction manuals — years of collecting now moving from storage to their permanent home.
🪵 The Flooring Phase – Load 3 Arrives
Thursday brought 18 boxes of wooden flooring and underlay, part of a 120 m² order from TJ O’Mahony Arklow.
Total cost: just under €1,600 for 81 boxes — a superb deal.
Only 18 boxes were in stock, so we squeezed them into the X-Trail for the first run.
The remaining boxes are due to be collected next week using another Enterprise Rent-A-Van, when we’ll also move everything still stored at home, in the sheds, and in our Sandyford storage unit.
By Thursday evening, the entrance area (which will double as the Buy / Sell / Trade zone) was swept clean, prepped, and ready for the new flooring to be laid next week.
🐉 Surprise Ending – Ninjago City Rises
We couldn’t resist a teaser for what’s to come.
By Friday, the first Ninjago City layout began taking shape — complete with not one, but two Destiny’s Bounty ships ready to set sail in the corner of the museum.
The Forge is coming alive.
🧱 Week 1 Recap – A Warehouse Transformed
In just a few days, we went from an empty shell to a structured workspace filled with:
✅ 12 tables built and positioned
✅ Baseplates and layouts in place
✅ BrickCon displays safely moved in
✅ Paint and prep under way
✅ Wooden flooring arrived
✅ First LEGO themes on display
What started as a vision is now physically taking shape — one brick, one shelf, and one sweep of paint at a time.
🎥 Watch Vlog Episode 2 on YouTube
👉 Building the LEGO Museum Begins!
(If you missed Episode 1, start here: We Got the Keys – Arklow & Dublin BrickCon 2025)
🔧 Shout-outs & Thanks
Huge appreciation to everyone who made Week 1 possible:
- 🚐 Enterprise Rent-A-Van South Dublin
- 🧱 B&Q Ireland
- 🪑 IKEA Ireland
- 🔧 The Range Liffey Valley
- 🎨 TJ O’Mahony Arklow
No sponsors, just genuine gratitude from the Forge team.
