I guess we're starting with the end result, but this is what it all leads up to. I found a cheap decently well made trunk that was exactly the right size to hold the 5 big arkham boxes, and the 5 or 6 random other boxes that hold everything.

I changed the handles on the box because they were quite flimsy. Painted part of the hinge "oil rubbed bronze", a black with copper specks. All the custom wood boxes were painted with this color, looks like old metal.

Here are some of the contents. Some of those boxes and plano are stored in the big AH boxes, but I took them out to show any pre-fab (bought) boxes I've used. The dice towers I made out of foam core from awesome plans I found online:
http://boardgamegeek.com/filepage/63271/dice-tower-cthulhu-b...

Counting, measuring, averaging, the math teacher emerges.
I made piles of 150, 100, 50, 30, etc sleeved cards and measured the heights, found an average thickness for the cards which was 0.75mm. I scoured arkham horror wiki http://www.arkhamhorrorwiki.com/Main_Page for the number of cards with all expansions, and calculated the inner dimensions of all the boxes I needed to make.
Part 2b