Two spaces - 800-miles apart

[Pete Gossett]

I figure it's time to start chronicling my garage/workshop updates, although it'll be a couple more weeks before I really get started on things. I'll also use this as an opportunity to compare and contrast the new digs to my previous one.

Here's my introductory post: http://www.garagejournal.com/forum/showthread.php?t=320157

My wife and I recently purchased a home on the MS gulf coast, partly in order to help her career, and mostly to get away from IL winters. However, we still have property & kids in IL. I'm fortunate that I'm able to telecommute/work remotely 100% which gives me great flexibility for working from almost anywhere with decent internet. Because of this, rather than renting a truck and making a hasty move of most our belongings, I'm able to haul a trailer-load at a time...this will come in very handy, as there are plenty of upgrades I want to do to the new garage & workshop before I completely settle in.



Here are a couple pics of what I'm starting with at our new place. A 30'x22' garage - long, but somewhat narrow - with a small storage area framed into the back corner.

It's pretty sparse and dark, but it does have 220v, and is in good condition.



About 40' behind it in the backyard is a separate 12'x24' workshop.

It's wood floor construction, set up on concrete pilings. It also as 220v...and is similarly dark.


The general plan(at this moment) is to finish out the workshop, and turn it into a nice, clean, tidy place for bicycle repair & storage, musical/electronic projects, and general homeowner projects.

Then, at some point after that I'll look into brightening up the garage - possibly finishing it out too, not sure yet - and make it into a more suitable workspace for the vehicles, welding, and other "dirtier" projects.

 

[Pete Gossett]

But first, a little background, and a little history to put it all in perspective...

Our small(1300 population) hometown in IL used to be a booming antique/tourist town back in the 1970's through the mid-90's. Then the dawn of the internet, and particularly eBay really changed the marketplace, and things slowly started into decline. However, in 2003 a fire took out the largest section of our historic downtown, and that was pretty much the end of it.

With buildings abandoned and in decay, the town board decided to invest some money into stabilizing the buildings, and set about looking for investors to get the storefronts opened for business again. It was around 2009, we happened to be at a point where our family of 6 desperately needed more room, but without any equity in our home(prices here never recovered at all after the market tanked) moving to a larger house wasn't really an option.

We put in an offer on an adjoined pair of buildings, totaling 8800 sq-ft, which had a 3500 sq-ft second floor that had begun to be remodeled into living space. It had been vacant for about 10-years by that point, there was major water damage to the 1st and 2nd floors in one side, but the village had tuck-pointed the entire building, and replaced a considerable amount of brickwork. It had 2 brand-new furnaces and central-a/c units on the 2nd floor that had never been turned on, all but 3 windows on the 2nd floor had been replaced with double-pane ones, and the wiring was about 80% complete. We bought it for $2700... <- that's not a typo.

Part of the requirement for purchase was having a business operating within a year. 2-months later I had an open sign in the window and was offering computer repair & related services(as a part-time business in the evenings), 2-months after that and we opened the back room to our town barber, the following year we opened the other 1/2 of the store into antiques/junk/etc. We did ok selling that stuff until about a year ago when the market dried up- most of our customers thought they would become the next "American Pickers", and as soon as reality(and the novelty of the show) wore off, our business pretty much dropped to nothing. I'd had my step-son watch the store full-time for the past 2 years, but it was time for him to get a "real" job anyway, so we closed the store last summer and auctioned off most of the remaining inventory, in preparation for our move to MS.


Here is how this all ties in to our new place in MS: When we bought our building in IL in '09 it was empty - all 8800 sq-ft of it. In the time since then it's gotten to the point I have trouble finding space for things. I've always been a packrat, and I've always loved junk, but I was borderline turning into a complete hoarder - and it was time to put an end to that.


So to give a bit of visual reference, here are a couple pictures of what we started with in IL, and how it looks right now.

This was my main store/workspace:

Here's the 3rd floor "warehouse".

And here are a couple pics of the outside of the place, just to give an overall view.

So as I hinted in my first post, I want...no, I need to prevent this from happening at our new place - and I realize I'm 100% the reason it happened in IL. I hope that by remodeling the workshop before trying to cram 10lbs of **** into a 5lb space that I can create a neat, tidy, organized workspace that I'll be able to keep that way. Rather than just bringing something into it without a clear plan of what to do with it, or where to make a home for it.

 

[captain14]

You have posted your new place here before. Can you place a link so the others can find it. I am sure other will remember it from the photos above.

It's hard to stop acquiring treasures , but you gotta stop somewhere


Good luck on this journey in the new home.

 

[Pete Gossett]

You have posted your new place here before. Can you place a link so the others can find it. I am sure other will remember it from the photos above.

It's hard to stop acquiring treasures , but you gotta stop somewhere


Good luck on this journey in the new home.

Thanks Captain, I updated my first post.


The one good thing is I've got a pretty good start on cabinetry and storage for the new shop. Here are a few pieces I'm hoping to clean up, paint, and put together a nice storage system with in the new shop.

The tall cabinet on the left belonged to my father. Right now it's packed with a pretty random array of things(some from him, and he's been gone for over 20-years). When I was cleaning out the garage at our old house(which had become a rental property) in IL I just wrapped it all up & moved it as-is. I need to go through it before taking it to MS though. The two cabinets stacked next to it were on the wall of that garage when I bought the place in '03.

This cabinet was also in the garage at the old house when I bought it. It's a pretty solid metal cabinet, though I never really utilized it(or had a plan for it). It ended up holding some car cleaning products, random "junk-drawer" type stuff in the top drawer, and some of my daughter's baby clothes(she's 16 now...) to use as rags, but never did.

Here's the workbench from the old garage. I wish I knew more of the history on it, but knowing the history of the house I'm guessing no newer than the 1970's though maybe closer to the 1950's? It's an easy 300lbs though.

There's one other cabinet from the old place that I don't have a pic of right now, but I think it will become the starting point for my hardware organization. It's an old kitchen cabinet base, about 4'-wide, and 24" deep. The countertop matches the green cabinet above almost perfectly too. I have a bunch of plastic storage bins, including some that interlock and are just a bit bigger than an outlet box. I'm thinking of lining the two drawers with the interlocking boxes, and putting the longer bins on the shelves inside the bottom. I have a metal set of sliding drawers that's about the same width & has 24 bins that will set on top, then my smaller plastic bins can go above it...or at least that's how I'm visualizing it. We'll see how it turns out once all the pieces start coming together.


Then there are a couple things from our shop that I'm going to place into service. First, I have a couple sections of drawers from the old bank down the street. Unfortunately, only about every-other space is a drawer, the rest are just cubby holes - and almost all of them are different widths. I'll just cut out the sections I need & splice them together in whatever way seems to make the most sense. The one drawer that still has the money dividers will likely be used for misc. hardware that doesn't really have a home in any other parts bins, but beyond that I'm not sure...maybe more of the small interlocking bins, if needed.

Lastly(for now, anyway) I built these tables for our shop, at one point I had about 10,000 record albums stored on/under them, and a couple other larger tables. Just today I pulled off the dividers I'd built for the tops, and stacked the tables up to get an idea how they'd work as shelving. If needed, I'll put these along one wall of the garage, and they'd work great for holding totes, or about anything else. They already had ~500lbs of vinyl on them, so I know they'll take the abuse!

That'll be all the updates for a couple weeks. My next steps once I get back to MS are to repair the outside of the workshop(the bead board siding has rotted along the lower edge in a couple places), seal it all up as weather-tight as I can, then as time/money allow start finishing out the inside. It looks like a grand would get me pretty close to having it insulated/drywalled/painted/floored, though I hope to score some deals and try to stay under that number.

 

[Pete Gossett]

I finally made it back to the coast, and started a bit of work sealing up the backyard workshop.

The bead-board siding is really showing it's age in spots, and I'm surprised it's survived at all in this humid climate, but I'll do my best to make it last as long as I can. My main goal is to seal it up and hopefully prevent the critter intrusion problem I've found evidence of.

I salvaged some 1x6's from the former record bins in the last pic of my previous post, and brought them down with me. My plan is to paint the bad spots on the siding and attempt to secure the loose areas as best I can, then paint the 1x6's and attach them all around the lower perimeter of the building. After that, I'll follow up with silicone caulk and/or expanding foam insulation to seal up any remaining gaps.

 

[Richard Cranium]

If I had the room, My place would look like that also, I have the hoarder gene in me.

 

[kjdhawkhill]

The general plan(at this moment) is to finish out the workshop, and turn it into a nice, clean, tidy place for bicycle repair & storage, ........ and general homeowner projects.

Then, at some point after that I'll look into brightening up the garage - possibly finishing it out too, not sure yet - and make it into a more suitable workspace for the vehicles, welding, and other "dirtier" projects.

I'm in. But you know, a real cyclist keep the bikes in the living room. A half hearted one like me in the garage... but a shed out back?!

I look forward to seeing the developments.

 

[Pete Gossett]

I'm in. But you know, a real cyclist keep the bikes in the living room. A half hearted one like me in the garage... but a shed out back?!

I look forward to seeing the developments.

It's ok, I barely count as a "cyclist".

 

[Pete Gossett]

Well I finally have a workbench in the garage...it's not the one I want, or plan on keeping as-is, but I needed some type of work surface to tear into a non-working ceiling fan from our gazebo.

I inherited this from my last garage, and never cared much for it. However, I'm thinking of replacing the countertop and lower shelf with steel, adding some reinforcement and casters to the legs, taking advantage of the knock-outs on the legs for an outlet, and turning it into a mobile metalworking table.

I also made some progress on the workshop, and got the wavy siding reattached...they used framing nails to attach the bead-board to the studs. Now the sides are secure, but in looking at the areas along the bottom where the siding was bad, I discovered damage to the joists in a couple places. Fortunately the outer joists are paired, and the inner joist is solid behind here, but I'm not sure if this is just rot or termite damage? I'm going to have Terminex take a look at it since we're under contract with them.

 

[Pete Gossett]

Well I finished painting the 1x6s to go around the lower perimeter of the workshop, but I'm going to hold off on installing them until I have time to replace the rotted wood shown above.

I had some time to kill last night, and since one of my main concerns is organizing all the hardware and random ****, I decided the first thing I need to do is organize my organizers... However, since I don't have all of them down here yet, I started with these bins. They were on an open shelf at my old garage for about 10-years, and used for random things like small bottles/tubes of chemicals(anti-seize, silicone sealant, etc.), hose clamps & short pieces of hose, vacuum T's...that kind of stuff. Being exposed in a garage for 10-years, they were pretty filthy, so I figured I might as well clean them now.

Before:

After:

I don't yet have a specific plan for what I'm going to use these for, but I want to put them in a cabinet(along with all the other misc. stuff I'm trying to get a grip on), probably on a shelf that slides out for better access.


Today I had a bit of luck - I'd noticed something under one of the workbenches in the workshop, tucked between the studs against the wall. I'd not really investigated, but at a glance they looked like either pavers, or cutoff lumber. I'm usually out there either early morning before work, or later afternoon/early evening after work. However, our office was closed today and I found myself out there mid-morning. As luck would have it, the light was coming through the door just right, that I happened to glance down and notice a lip across these...turns out they're old fastener bins!

 

[FTWingRiders]

Got your hands full there, but it will be a great space when your done. Nice you don't have to cram it all in right away. Love your old building in Il. It's a shame to see them just sit there empty, there are so many across the US. Will you have any problem selling it now? At least you got it at a heck of a price! 8800 sq ft is huge, but I know I'd fill it up too.. Just can't resist an empty space..lol

Nice score with the two parts bins!

 

[Pete Gossett]

Thanks!

If we ever get to the point of listing our building(our kids are living there now) it'll be interesting to see how it goes. Property values in general, outside of tillable farm ground, are very low in our area. There isn't any desire or need for commercial space either. However, I expect someone would be interested in the building for the same reasons we were - the question is whether we'll be able to get the money we've invested in it back out? Though as long as we have family there it makes more sense just to keep it.

 

[Pete Gossett]

I dug out some storage bins a friend gave to me several years ago, I'm going to get this cabinet put into place - temporarily, until I can drywall & insulate the shop - and start plotting out how I want to setup my "alter-of-hardware".

 

[Pete Gossett]

Finally - an actual bit of progress!

I was starting a project the other day and realized I had my drill bits scattered amongst several boxes of stuff - and that's just the bits I brought down here, I still have more back in IL - so I decided now was the time to get them organized.

Here's the pile I started with. There's actually another handful of long bits in one of the storage cabinets, but I'll get those worked in with these after I start sorting fasteners.

And this is what I ended up with. The two boxes in the back are for my hole saws and Kreg stuff, the wood ballot-box in the front only has my brushes, stones, disks, etc. The red box in front is all the extras, and the tray along the right side has long bits, then everything else sorted by type. Though I now realize that despite the fact that most of what I work on is metric, I don't own a single metric bit. I guess I'll need to work on that...

I had to stop at Lowe's yesterday, and found a bunch of sockets on their clearance cart for cheap - $0.35-$0.52 each, so I bought an assortment of metric sizes. They're intended for their "Access" wrench, which I don't have, and are splined inside - it appears they can be used with both SAE and metric heads. I've had a few occasions where I could use a splined wrench over the years. No idea of the spline count on these would actually work, but the top of the sockets have a hex head so I could use them with a wrench or another socket. For a few bucks I figured they were worth picking up.

Lastly, I have these cabinets back in IL that I picked up several years ago. I've never really utilized them, and I'm trying to decide whether to haul them down to MS or not. I don't know much about them, but I believe they came from the old Hyster plant that closed down years ago...oh, and they're very heavy-duty. They're an easy 250-300lbs each. I just can't think of any good use for them outside, and I don't have anyplace inside I could put them?