The weather the past three days has been amazing! It did lightly rain most of Saturday with a few down pours. The rain was on&off Sunday, but I did get a little time in the garage to blow out the cricket **** and straighten things up a bit. I still have a lot to purge, but I rearranged the bicycles so they're easier for my wife and son to get out of the garage.
Today was spectacular. It was great to be working at the computer in the DR with the windows open the whole day without the A/C running or even sweating.
Late last week I filled the back of my Forester with motorcycle parts and hauled those to my local motorcycle salvage yard. I probably have two or three more loads and a few frames to haul off. I've decided that I'm still going to hang the plywood on the walls and ceiling in the garage. Mostly to get it out of my way and it will help keep things cleaner. I haven't decided if I'm actually going to insulate it or not. I'll have to see what the tax credit is for this year. I'll only buy as much as I can get the credit for. My neighbor is planning to do something with his garage so I'll probably give him whatever I have left over that I won't use for the drawers on my work bench and the bookcase shelves I'm still building.
During the week and on the weekends when it's been pouring rain, I've been focused on getting my stuff in the basement back to being organized and purging. I kept a lot of paper. Mostly magazine articles I had torn out to be read later or scanned into PDFs. Hauled about three 13 gallon cans worth of paper out to the recycling bin so far and still going. I probably have a stack about a foot tall of magazine articles that I need to sort through still. Then I condensed electronic bits for building amps down and freed up a couple more totes. I still have more to go through and I need to kit up a lot of the parts for the amps they will be used to build and sell them off as kits. Kitted I can probably get close to 85% of current retail for the total BOM. Since I bought the parts years ago in bulk, I'll definitely break even. I just have to get my work space cleared off so I have a clean area to do the sorting and kitting. That may not happen until this November or so, but it's going to get done.
I've started a new little side hobby. Since I was diagnosed with Celiac Disease just over 6 years ago I lost one of my favorite hobbies which was buying bottle conditioned beers and aging them, then drinking the aged beers on holidays to see how they had changed over time. I used to keep wines, but the ones I really liked were on the more expensive side and I kind of got burned out on it so i switched to the Belgium and other bottled conditioned beers. Then I lost that hobby. I really missed having something that I could collect slowly, a few at a time, and keep for years to see how they improved. Other than wine, there really wasn't anything that I found that would get significantly better with age. Then I found a Punch Gran Puro cigar that I had bought before my son was born in a tackle box in my basement last year. I know it was from his birth because it was in a tube and had a sticker on it that read, "It's A Boy!" Well, I put it aside and forgot about it again until I started sorting things and getting ready for a trip to Michigan City that we took right before I started my new job. I took the cigar out of the tube and put in a ziplock with a humidity pack. Both husbands of the friend group we met in Michigan City smoke cigars quite a bit so I brought the vintage stogie with me. I would occasionally smoke a cigar when we got together and one with my dad on Father's Day, so maybe 3 or 4 a year. That 13yo Punch changed my life.
Wow! It was amazing. Up until then I really had no idea that cigars get so much better with age. I always thought they were something you bought to be consumed in the short term after buying them. Now I know and I realized I can have my collecting/aging hobby back! So I've bought a few sampler packs of different brands and styles to try, then a few boxes of ones that I liked to get the "freebies" they include, which is usually more samplers. Suddenly in a month I'm up to 110-120 sticks... and no humidor. Started shopping and doing research. I realized that I will quickly outgrow even the "200" sized humidors since I plan to keep most of these things to age for the next 3-20 years. I don't have the room for a big humidor right now either. What to do?
A coolidor to the rescue! Low and behold, most serious collectors without gobs of disposable income or space use 50-140qt coolers to store their stogies for the long term. I read up on it and how to set them up. So this weekend I grabbed a Coleman Xtreme 70qt cooler, then picked up 10 empty solid cedar cigar boxes. I've got the cooler cleaned and sanitized. Tomorrow I'll check it to make sure the plastic smell is gone, then the empty boxes go in the cooler to be seasoned. Then I can start to stabilize the humidity inside the cooler so I should be able to add my sticks to the cooler this weekend. My 70qt cooler will hold 400-500 sticks, so it will last me a year or two before I need to upgrade. What a coincidence! That's perfect timing isn't it!
A few pics of the coolidor project. I had just tossed the ten boxes in the cooler originally and was concerned about space, then I figured out how to stack them better so I have enough room for 15-20 boxes and space for the humidification too:
While I've been cleaning and purging, I've been thinking about what I really want for my next house and the "shed". The small house plan I posted way back at the beginning of this thread was designed by Shawn Dehner who owns
THE small HOUSE CATALOG. I subscribe to his email newsletter and check out his site every month when he releases a new house plan. Going back through his old plans, I discovered a lot of his small plans are built on a 22'x24', 24'x24', or 20' x 30' footprint. Kind of looks like the footprint of a 2 car garage doesn't it? Why, yes it does! That's a shed in my book! He now sells these stock plans for $50, but when I first subscribed you could download them for free. I have a few of the small houses downloaded from back in the day too. But I have no plans to build the small house as a house, it will be my shed. One that will have my "Gentlemen's Lounge" at the front and my workshop at the back. I'll have a "root cellar" or "storm shelter" under the lounge half. The spaces will be completely isolated for fumes, sound, fire, etc... If we buy a 2-story house, then I will build a 2-story shed. The upper floor will just be a guest room. But since the shed will be based on the plans for a small house, the plumbing will be in the plans so that will make it much easier with the permitting. I might even be able to get it permitted as an ADU (Accessory Dwelling Unit). If an ADU won't fly, the plans will be changed enough to just make it considered a detached garage or shed. However it's permitted, I'll still call it a shed.
Here are pics of some of the single story small houses. I'd have to make the exterior and roof lines match the existing house, but the basic idea would be to have either a single or double entry doors on the front and larger double exterior doors on the rear shop portion. I'd frame the opening to accept a standard single garage door, but I wouldn't use one. I'll use double doors. The first pic is the one that would be the easiest to convert to my needs and I would probably add a porch to the front and one side for an outdoor kitchen and entertaining area. The others would have their existing porches extended and modified to accommodate the outdoor kitchen/entertaining areas.
In addition to the plan for the structure, I have collected a bunch of pics of built in bars, interiors, and other cool things for the Gentlemen's Lounge. I'll share those soon in another post. It's getting late and this post is already really long.
Cheers!
My plan for storage will be a couple of the 58" Milwaukee tool chests plus the one that will be converted to my welding cart with the 30" top chest on the 58" bottom. The 30" bottom chest would also be in the garage. Other than those chests, I think I would only need 4 or 6 wall mounted cabinets, and a couple 4' sections of the heavy-duty rack shelving to store my motorcycle engines on. Then I'll have my fold-up spray booth, blast cabinet, and DIY curing oven. The plan is to have all of the yard equipment and bicycles in the garage attached to the house. Or worst case, I'll add a lean-to on the "shed" for that ****. It will not go into the workshop unless it's being worked on. 
