End of a very busy week.

Holy-moly that was an intense week that just passed. Hard to believe it was a short week either, with it being so chock a block full of projects, requests, reports, labels, and in store retail items. Wowsers, I mean. Phew! Made it through. Fantastic! My phone hasn’t rung that much in a decade let alone a single work week. Felt like being with an agency again. Let us pray the following weeks are more tempered, evenly spaced out, and steady but not over powering. But as a freelancer I know that when it rains, it pours! Quiet for weeks and then BAM! All things, everywhere, all at once. It was rather intense.

But, now here we are on Saturday morning and it’s cold, grey, and threatening rain for the day. I have one last climbing session today before the next one starts up in two weeks time. I am going to bring both kids today because it’s a fun way to spend two or three hours together. My wife’s plans were canceled due to illness (not a new one for her, thankfully) but her friend awoke with a newly sore throat, so no brunch plans in Barrie for them. Which means that the dog walk at the farm will fall to her while I have the kids active, and out of the house for three hours mid day. Cool? Cool.

I picked up my (on sale — deeply discounted) tool chest for all of my wood working tools yesterday morning. So later today I need to pull it out of the box, stack them, attach the wheels and handles, and tear down the wooden cart it is replacing, and also tear down the cheapo crap work bench I first started with fifteen years ago. I have a light to move and rehang, plus some other things to work out. I think pulling the old work bench apart will take longer than expected because it took FOREVER to assemble all those nuts & bolts. Could be a three hour job, or longer. I remember hating my life passionately.

Then I have to break down the wooden cart too, salvage my castor wheels, and take the carcass to the farms burn pile for disposal. And on Tuesday the cardboard will go out for recycling. And I shall have hopefully reclaimed another few square feet of open space next to my work bench which should allow me to build more freely. I cannot move walks so the next best thing is to organize the space, and condense things down to the smallest, yet still easily accessible foot print. I may have finally achieved that feat. We will see. I have a lot more stuff than I realize I do. I learned that the hard way when I tore down that rickety old shelving unit to erect the red steel one. Pretty soon I might even be able to move a 2×4 around the shop freely without having to play interior space Tetris to reorient a bit of wood. Piv-ot! Piv-ot!

I currently have a small cart where my Mitre saw sits, and that will get a slight upgrade. I’m going to transfer the work bench top to the cart so that I have a wider surface for my saw to open into, that will then have nothing around it, on either side, to interfere with cutting planks down to size. Sounds counter intuitive, but I’m going to make it work. My metal vise will get transferred to a wood block so I have clamp it to my bench because I don’t use it all that often. Just to sharpen lawn mower blades, and my loppers, which I do once in the spring, and once in the fall. I don’t fabricate metal things, so it’s in the way the rest of the time. I’ll store it under the Mitre saw cart overhang. Easily accessible, but out of the way. Boom! That’s a win. That’ll be all she wrote as far as the garage goes. I’ve decided that I will simply purchase wood closer to spec rather than buying a bandsaw myself.

I might have to add some support struts to the Mitre saw table top, but I can look into that if it feels tippy or too floppy. For right now I have plans for underneath the overhangs. Nothing crazy, but you never know until you get there if you haven’t done it before. I do have a sneaking suspicion that it will need a frame, struts, or some additional legs out towards the ends of the overhangs. Just a hunch.

I’m not looking forward to unscrewing all of those drawers, drawer slides, legs, and supports for the modular work bench. There are plenty of folks around here whom will pick up scrap metal so the aftermath isn’t a problem. Anywho, best of luck today.