Making do with what I’ve got laying around.

Finished as much of the tear down of tables & carts that I can do at this time. Taking those materials and converting them into additional storage space off the floor in amongst the racking that was put in before we bought the house. For years now i have loathed the very presence of those racks. Stealing precious square footage from my garage shop. Always have to work around them, and be annoyed by them. But now, a decade on, I’ve decided to modify them, customize them to suit my needs. So extra shelves have been added to the existing space, with no additional coverage to my floors. Same amount of stuff, and more room to manoeuvre about in. Glorious. Five (5) new shelves have been put in place. I have enough material to add at least two more if/when i need them. Not to shabby. I’m trying to get my wife’s high school to take my Radial Arm saw, as even though i used it three times today, i want to remove it. I can do as much with a circular saw, or a new compound sliding mitre saw.

I used to be all about having tables & carts, and surfaces everywhere I could fit them. But once you actually need to build anything larger than a shoe box all of a sudden the garage feels like the kitchen on a submarine, and I can’t get around or move things, or do a glue up of a panel and anything else at the same time. Not that I’m over here doing projects 24/7, but feeling squashed in like that makes me waffle on deciding to do something, because I know it’ll annoy me, or scratch me, or cut me open some how. Not the worst thing, but enough of a mental block to cause me to sit on my phone and waste a precious few hours that I should have spent building furniture we need for the house.

So now I am on a reclaim the space kick. There is a finite amount of it, and what I do have is not a great big cavernous plot. I have to maximize what I have. So that’s why I’m getting rid of stuff, and moving consumables up onto the racks, and off the floor. Finding a solution to my bloody great ladder would be of major help too. Not keen on hanging it up out side, but also have no room to continue to store it inside the garage. It’s great for the trees and to gain access to the roof, but far too big to do anything interior related. It’s a 24-30ft ladder when extended all the way out. Heavy and unwieldy. Lots of fun on a windy day.

If I didn’t need my second work bench for my metal vice, I’d swap it for a rolling tool cart of a smaller footprint, but taller, and still have a light on it. Again, more wishful thinking. It also doubles as the right half of my mitre saw station, since I just tore down the left side. But, making progress. No need to spend all that hard earned money in one year to make it right. As I have since learned. What I needed 10 years ago, is different to what I need now. And in another 5-10 years who knows what sort of configuration I’ll want the shop space to be in. So small, wobbly, cash only fixes for now. That’s my unsolicited advice. Ciao Bella.