Between 485 & 705 SQ/FT Mid-Century Moto Mecca Makeover

[Wreckster23]

Man I'm feeling old, your kids have gotten so big!

 

[gearhead1960]

Yeah, some things slipped by for sure. And thanks for posting that - we have a lot of big road trips coming up and we're always looking for new podcasts.
Gregor

I completely understand. Hope you find something you like with the suggested podcasts. Mike Rowe has over 100 episodes. What's interesting about them is he tells a true story about a historical figure and as he tells the story, he won't say who this person is by name. You have to piece together the clues as he is relaying the story. He eventually tells you who he is talking about, but it's fun trying to figure out who he is talking about before he lets you in on who it is.

Our road trip this summer starts with a family reunion then Cuyahoga NP, moving on to New York and then Toronto. Stops include several FLW houses, Niagara Falls, Blue Jays baseball, and possibly the Pierce Arrow Museum to name just a few.

Look forward to hearing about your trips and hope they bring lots of great memories.

 

[sakurama]

Man I'm feeling old, your kids have gotten so big!

Right? I was just going through the gallery and seeing the shots of them from when we got the house... Well, it shows that I'm really slow at this.

So the thing that is making me crazy right now (well one of the things) is the garage. I need to get the Bridgeport placed and rearranged the garage so I can work in there again. Getting rid of the garage door isn't something Judiaann is happy about - mostly because she thinks it will look weird - but I need the space that an extra wall will give me.

Since I'm barely smart enough to recognize that building a big hanger door is another project that would take over my life I went to The Rebuilding Center to see what sort of used doors they had.

Of the 6 or 7 rows of doors one set stuck out to me. See if you can pick them out of this photo above.

I wanted a door large enough that I could move the largest tool into or out of the shop and that would be either the Bridgeport or the welding table. Both at least 48" wide and both pretty darn heavy.

There's no single door that wide unless I wanted to make a door and Ben tried to talk me out of making a door and into something prehung but I figured if I found something that could work I'd go for it.

I chose these doors based pretty much on the hinges - four massive fully concealed hinges that I think are vintage Soss. Plus, at $50 for the pair it was hard to go wrong as that probably wouldn't buy me one of those hinges much less all 8 and two solid doors. I'll need to source a handle and lock but hopefully that won't be too hard.

It's probably going to be way more work than I anticipate to hang them and I'll need to build some sort of jig to mortise the frame but these should help me free up both ceiling and wall space. Each door weighs in at 143lbs so just under 300lbs for the pair. That's a solid set of doors.

Don't hold your breath but I'm going to try to get them done by Sept which might be wishful thinking.

Gregor

 

[neilc]

Do you have a MFS jig for your Festool router? That’s a mortise jig from rails that is fully adjustable.

I use my Shaper Origin handheld CNC router for Soss hinge mortises and it’s awesome. But the MFS is a good alternative with a guide collar on the router.

You could also make one from wood pieces with Kreg jig. Google Festool MFS template.

Great deal on the doors!


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[Terranova]

Check out the 99% invisible podcast too. You'd dig it. .

As an example.
https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/77-steps/

 

[lilscorpion]

Don't hold your breath but I'm going to try to get them done by Sept which might be wishful thinking.

Gregor - any progress on the doors?

 

[jeffmoss26]

Right? I was just going through the gallery and seeing the shots of them from when we got the house... Well, it shows that I'm really slow at this.

So the thing that is making me crazy right now (well one of the things) is the garage. I need to get the Bridgeport placed and rearranged the garage so I can work in there again. Getting rid of the garage door isn't something Judiaann is happy about - mostly because she thinks it will look weird - but I need the space that an extra wall will give me.

Since I'm barely smart enough to recognize that building a big hanger door is another project that would take over my life I went to The Rebuilding Center to see what sort of used doors they had.

Of the 6 or 7 rows of doors one set stuck out to me. See if you can pick them out of this photo above.

I wanted a door large enough that I could move the largest tool into or out of the shop and that would be either the Bridgeport or the welding table. Both at least 48" wide and both pretty darn heavy.

There's no single door that wide unless I wanted to make a door and Ben tried to talk me out of making a door and into something prehung but I figured if I found something that could work I'd go for it.

I chose these doors based pretty much on the hinges - four massive fully concealed hinges that I think are vintage Soss. Plus, at $50 for the pair it was hard to go wrong as that probably wouldn't buy me one of those hinges much less all 8 and two solid doors. I'll need to source a handle and lock but hopefully that won't be too hard.

It's probably going to be way more work than I anticipate to hang them and I'll need to build some sort of jig to mortise the frame but these should help me free up both ceiling and wall space. Each door weighs in at 143lbs so just under 300lbs for the pair. That's a solid set of doors.

Don't hold your breath but I'm going to try to get them done by Sept which might be wishful thinking.

Gregor

I may or may not have asked the manager at my local ReStore if I could remove and purchase a particular Sargent lock off of a door they had in stock. He obliged!

 

[sakurama]

Gregor - any progress on the doors?

This summer...

I have been really busy with work and I made family vacations a priority as well. The thing that really took a hit was my personal time. I think it took me until the end of the summer to realize this. I haven't ridden all summer and that and working in the shop are my two ways to reset. The shop has been a mess with the Bridgeport stuck on it's pallet and me not having time to attack the doors and remake the shop so that therapy has been missing as well.

I even started an update to just catch up on summer activities but then Lightroom has crashed and I've spent hours on support with Adobe trying to get my library back. So even my ability to post to this thread has been curtailed.

All of that to say no. And it's really making me tense and irritable. Ben has offered to help but I haven't been able to take him up on it. It's a tough summer.

I am booked right now through Sept but have carved out a couple of days at the end of the month to finally get a chance to ride. After that I'll tackle the doors. I have to claw my way back to sanity.

Sorry, if Adobe can sort out their issue I'll be able to at least catch you up on a few things from the summer.

Gregor

 

[gearhead1960]

......I'll be able to at least catch you up on a few things from the summer.

Gregor

Looking forward to an update.....you've left us hanging. Along with a shop update, I want to hear what podcasts you and the family enjoyed while on vacation.

 

[Bob Heine]

Gregor, your time spent on family vacations means you had a wonderful summer. The window of time your children will lovingly remember seeing and doing things with the family is amazingly short. You never know what, when or where something will leave a wonderful and indelible memory -- a perfect snapshot in the mind. The more you do and show, the more snapshots they'll have.

 

[lilscorpion]

This summer...



I have been really busy with work and I made family vacations a priority as well.

Glad to hear you’re out spending time worth them fam and having a great summer. Those are moments to savor.

All of those projects in yours will be there when you’re ready to go all in again. Sometimes I think that what makes a fabricator great in the shop is time out of the shop. Having a little balance is good.

 

[f121]

Thankyou for sharing this thread Gregor, it's a fantastic read - educational and inspirational in equal measure. It helped me realise that it's not just me with too many projects and a tendency to not complete things in pursuit of perfection, although I haven't quite figured out the answer yet.

The other big idea that this thread has given me is that woodworking doesn't have to be dusty - growing up my dad's woodwork always left a layer of dust over the garage, I assumed this is what it's like. Now I have a cleantec ('posh hoover') and have started taking dust management seriously, suddenly woodwork is a lot nicer.

Also shaving rivets...I keep telling people about that and none have heard of it

 

[bdbecker]

Gregor, your time spent on family vacations means you had a wonderful summer. The window of time your children will lovingly remember seeing and doing things with the family is amazingly short. You never know what, when or where something will leave a wonderful and indelible memory -- a perfect snapshot in the mind. The more you do and show, the more snapshots they'll have.

Bob - thank you for this reminder.

 

[Choirboy]

Bob - thank you for this reminder.

Gregor, your time spent on family vacations means you had a wonderful summer. The window of time your children will lovingly remember seeing and doing things with the family is amazingly short. You never know what, when or where something will leave a wonderful and indelible memory -- a perfect snapshot in the mind. The more you do and show, the more snapshots they'll have.

Agreed, beautiful and insightful words from Bob. Gregor, we all need time and activities for our own personal sanity, but as I'm discovering as a new father, time with family is precious even if it is exhausting! I hope your vacations were blessed.
We all look forward to an update, but we also all know that sometimes life is busy.
That does **** about Adobe, however.

 

[wingnutthehutt]

You are not the only person I know who has had Lightroom crash recently. Mine has been fine, but it's a buncha nonsense, if you ask me.

 

[dwysywd]

Bob - thank you for this reminder.

[emoji1360] this is fantastic advice to live by



Sent from my iPhone using a facsimile machine.

 

[Zengineer]

Gregor, your time spent on family vacations means you had a wonderful summer. The window of time your children will lovingly remember seeing and doing things with the family is amazingly short. You never know what, when or where something will leave a wonderful and indelible memory -- a perfect snapshot in the mind. The more you do and show, the more snapshots they'll have.

Well put. It's so hard to embrace living "in the moment" at times though! The saying "the days are long, and the years are short" always pops to mind when I think of what it's like being a parent.

 

[sakurama]

I would like to apologize on behalf of all the fine folks at Adobe. For over two months I have lacked any access to my photos in Lightroom. They were there on my drives but Lightroom wouldn't open. The last month I have just been on a work tear that hasn't given me a moment to breath.

It's not quite over work wise but last week after another 4 hours of screen sharing with a nice person from India we got my catalog back - minus all the folders and organization.

So let's catch up a bit!

Right after my last post we loaded up the van and headed off to Colorado to visit family.

As a kid our family lived on Bear Basin Ranch for a summer in Westcliffe and my dad used to lead horseback rides and so it seemed like the exact thing I needed to do with my kids. The same ranch and the same trails but now, 40 years later. Nadia of course spent the remainder of the trip trying to convince us that we needed to have horses. If only we had the space.

We spent time with their cousin Amato riding horses and looking for fools gold in Westcliffe. I am very lucky that my kids enjoy long road trips and for that we owe our "no screens" policy with works on everyone but mom. We also discovered a new podcast for the summer: The Outside Podcast. It's "Stories of Survival" are really great but we skip the interviews that make up the other 50%.

The other thing that we did was some fishing, rafting and camping. Literally every day was some planned activity. It was exhausting.

We didn't take the trailer to Colorado - we knew we'd be spending our time with family and motels and motel pools are the sort of catnip that keeps the kids going on the long drives.

On the way home I stopped to do some scouting for an (then) upcoming shoot with Rev'It! in the mountains just east of Salt Lake City.

The month of August was really busy for Judiaann but the kids and I kept hitting the road albeit in Oregon. REI had a sale on bicycles and since the kids had outgrown their BMX bikes I ponied up for new mountain bikes for them. 24" Cannondales with 1x10 gears and they're very cool little bikes. No suspension because I want to keep the bikes light and simple and they (the kids) only weigh 50lbs so it's of little use.

It took a little bit of coaxing to get them on to single track but a weekend camping with Ben and his family along the McKenzie river and it's perfectly smooth trails set the hook.

The other thing that I got was a ghillie suit for Lucas. The kid loves camo almost as much as skulls and I thought that it might be a fun thing for camping.

This was hands down the best $40 I've ever spent for Lucas. To say that it was a hit would be an understatement of great proportions. And I have to say it's astonishing how well they work - at least in Oregon with it's copious moss and old man's beard.

Many hours have been spent on the trailer and it seems like we're finally turning a corner with it. The furnace is the last thing I'm replacing before winter as Lara may be wanting to live in it this winter while she looks for a house. Fingers crossed that she's moving to Oregon.

That catches us up to the end of summer. Not much has happened since then except work but I'll try to make another post to get us back up to speed.

Thanks for your patience!

Gregor

 

[bdbecker]

Looks like a great summer full of adventures! Horses, bikes, 4WD vanning, camping, and ghillie suits... what more could you ask for?

 

[Finallygotit]

Sounds like you had a great summer. Some of those pics are absolutely beautiful.


Thanks for sharing.

 

[Millcreekmadman]

Keep us posted on that swing arm repair. Not many people have the gull to make that sort of mod and push it to the breaking point. I applaud you sir!

 

[gearhead1960]

Gregor,

Glad to see you're back to posting the adventures of the Halendas!

The Survival series from the Outside Podcast was very eye opening. Gives you food for thought when visiting nature.

Looking forward to more updates and fabulous photography.....

 

[E12-535iTurbo]

Thanks Gregor!

 

[bp460]

Gregor,

Thank you for sharing your family adventures... the road trips are very inspiring. My kids are 4 and 2 and I am excited to start taking longer excursions. So your "no screen" policy means just podcasts and audio books while driving?

-Brad

 

[sakurama]

Gregor,

Thank you for sharing your family adventures... the road trips are very inspiring. My kids are 4 and 2 and I am excited to start taking longer excursions. So your "no screen" policy means just podcasts and audio books while driving?

-Brad

I'm sure the fight will become more difficult as they get older but right now it means no screens from the moment we leave the house until we get back home. That doesn't mean we won't turn on the TV in the hotel but they aren't playing Minecraft for the duration.

We had a funny moment this summer when they kids did an OMSI summer camp which included a field trip to Mt. St. Helens. After the trip Lucas asked, "Did you know that on the bus trip every kid but us had an ipad - why is that?"

Huh. I have no idea Lucas. What do you want for dinner?

Crisis averted. For now.

Not having the iPads along means they aren't thinking about Minecraft (as much) and that they're physically playing. I've read that boredom is the font of creativity for children so the key is to let them be bored and not feel you have to keep them occupied.

So far it's working.

Gregor

 

[bunks-tj]

I'm sure the fight will become more difficult as they get older but right now it means no screens from the moment we leave the house until we get back home. That doesn't mean we won't turn on the TV in the hotel but they aren't playing Minecraft for the duration.

We had a funny moment this summer when they kids did an OMSI summer camp which included a field trip to Mt. St. Helens. After the trip Lucas asked, "Did you know that on the bus trip every kid but us had an ipad - why is that?"

Huh. I have no idea Lucas. What do you want for dinner?

Crisis averted. For now.

Not having the iPads along means they aren't thinking about Minecraft (as much) and that they're physically playing. I've read that boredom is the font of creativity for children so the key is to let them be bored and not feel you have to keep them occupied.

So far it's working.

Gregor

As a middle school teacher you have no idea how much I love this

 

[goldtooth]

I'm sure the fight will become more difficult as they get older but right now it means no screens from the moment we leave the house until we get back home. That doesn't mean we won't turn on the TV in the hotel but they aren't playing Minecraft for the duration.

We had a funny moment this summer when they kids did an OMSI summer camp which included a field trip to Mt. St. Helens. After the trip Lucas asked, "Did you know that on the bus trip every kid but us had an ipad - why is that?"

Huh. I have no idea Lucas. What do you want for dinner?

Crisis averted. For now.

Not having the iPads along means they aren't thinking about Minecraft (as much) and that they're physically playing. I've read that boredom is the font of creativity for children so the key is to let them be bored and not feel you have to keep them occupied.

So far it's working.

Gregor

We have been doing this with our twin girls since they were small. We take two week long road trips in our Westy and we have a no device policy. They are almost 15 now and still do not have phones or devices and we do just fine. I want them to be bored and to be creative. One trip, they got very good at identifying cars by there grille/symbol as they drove past.

nate

 

[gasgas17]

The peer pressure to have their own phone by the time they are going through Junior high school (7,8,9 here) is so intense it's insane. As far as I'm concerned there should be no cell phones in schools period. None.

 

[goldtooth]

There is intense peer pressure here as well but if you don't make it an option for your kids, then they find a way to deal with it. My older two got phones when they started driving and got jobs. Gave them something to work towards. It is not easy though and maybe we are alienating our girls by not having phones or social media accounts. Time will tell

nate

 

[fartymarty]

It is not easy though and maybe we are alienating our girls by not having phones or social media accounts. Time will tell
nate

Parenting can be a rough road, it would be so much easier if you didn't love them..but then in that case why would you bother? If you have blow back from them down the road, just say you were doing the best you could and that you thought you were trying to save their lives.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/social-media-contributing-rising-teen-suicide-rate-n812426

https://time.com/5550803/depression-suicide-rates-youth/

 

[sakurama]

“The cure to boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity.”
― Dorothy Parker

I am on set today and we got onto the topic of great quotes. Dorthy Parker has always been my favorite and it was fun to see this quote which seems very appropriate here.

Gregor

 

[BoilermakerFan]

Love that quote! Unless you're a cat, then curiosity may kill you.


My F-I-L used to tell his kids that only stupid kids are bored. We've used that one on our kids.

 

[KST1]

Gregor,

Your son's ghillie suit made me think he might like The Ranger's Apprentice book series by John Flanagan http://www.worldofjohnflanagan.com/rangers-apprentice/

My son (now 17) loved that series and it's companion series The Brother's Band Chronicles. We all read them, had great conversations around them, and still refer to them often.

Also great as audio books, especially on road trips!

Thanks for sharing your family adventures,

-Derek

 

[wrigh003]

I spent a lot of time away from this board. Haven't surfed much in some years, really- life happened and our kids have been growing up and frankly garage/ gearhead stuff just faded into the background for a while in favor of family stuff. NBD, it just happens.

One of the reasons I came back was because I was trying to remember your username and see where you'd got with that cool old house- so now I've gotta catch up.

So: hey from across the US.

The catchup edit:
Cool bikes, cool van, cool trailer. The house is looking great, your kids are growing up quick with a FINE example of the kind of DIY ethos I hope to instill in my own. My boys are mostly probably learning to cuss at stuff and get mad that things don't pan out as well as you wanted them to, but they are at least seeing stuff get slowly (oh, so, so slowly...) done.

And finally: Sorry about your dad and your friend- without knowing you or them personally I still feel like they'd be proud of what you're accomplishing. Hell, I'm proud as can be of you and we've never even met. If you ever make it down Birmingham way, I got a beer for you. Big kudos on a life that looks well lived so far. Keep it up.

 

[KGB Pilot125]

I am a bit behind after a year or so of not logging in, moving, trying to finish out a new shop, quit my job, going to school and with Gregors advice of not having a back up plan trying to make a go at my own thing! But its nice to see old habits die hard... I got to the post about baking bread and I must have blacked out or something because a 2 days later a book, sourdough starter set and a baking dish arrived in some amazon boxes...

F'in Gregor!!

 

[JTH]

Hope all is well around your beautiful house and shop.

 

[sakurama]

Hope all is well around your beautiful house and shop.

Sorry to drop off again. This fall has been a super busy one with two of my biggest jobs coming back to back along with a handful of smaller jobs combining to pretty much **** up all my time. Combine that with continuing issues with Lightroom (I had to manually redirect 12000 photos in my catalog) and I just haven't had the energy.

So this post will try to give a quick overview of the fall so far. Lara is coming back to Oregon and hopefully she'll kick my *** and help me get moving on my next project.

Anyway, for over three weeks I was in NYC working with Oprah and Amazon. This is a huge project that I've been doing for years and this year was just a bit longer than normal. Those days are long - typically 16-18 hour days.

On my weekends I met up with a friend and rode his vintage MX race bike on his farm upstate in NY.

Riding clears my head and a day on the grass track really helped to reset me. The following weekend I pulled down my old Cannondale and cleaned it up so I could start riding it again instead of taking the subway.

Sorry for the poor quality - with Lightroom down I sort of quit taking photos with my Leica and just used the iPhone. And then I shot verticals for IG...

From NYC I flew straight out to Utah for the shoot with Rev'It! We had a big crew and rented out Snowbird and Utah Motorsports Campus. Here's a few BTS shots.

My friend Scott was our second still shooter and it was great as he's also a rider. We had so much to shoot that we split up the shoot into three segments with video and stills shooting in three separate locations and sometimes all on top of each other.

From Snowbird we headed to Miller Motorsports Campus... or whatever it's called now.

This was the rig we came up with for the tracking shots. We rented one of the tracks school cars...

The gimbal can really help to smooth and stabilize the camera so you can shoot as slow as 1/30th of a second but what we didn't anticipate was the g-forces that the car was able to pull while trying to lead the bikes. Supposedly around one G the gimbal just goes haywire so for subsequent runs we went handheld. The other issue was that this car ran rich. Like super rich and inhaling exhaust for even just a few laps was all I could handle.

I burn through gloves pretty quick with this method but the low angle looks really good.

Ben lent us his KTM 500EXC and we also used my 500 so at the end of the shoot Scott and I planned to take the long way back to Portland and try to get some riding in along the way. Sadly Scott ended up fracturing his wrist on the mountain portion but happily he was still able to ride one handed.

Doubly sad was the fact that one handed Scott was still able to ride faster than me. Damn whippersnapper.

We also used the time to explore some areas we may want to shoot in next year.

This was an area called Leslie Gultch in far eastern Oregon and it was a spot I'd never been to before.

After finally getting back home it was great to spend some time with the kids. While I haven't had any shop time (that's an issue for another post) we did get some time to tackle a project. Judiaann's old laptop gave up the ghost and was replaced so with nothing to lose I decided to give it to Nadia and Lucas if they could fix it. We ordered a new keyboard and battery and watched a couple of videos.

I was sort of amazed at how unintimidated they were - sure they had nothing to lose but as adults we imagine a computer as this mysterious and fragile machine. To Nadia and Lucas it was another form of Lego - just parts that go together a certain way.

I supervised but for the most part I wasn't needed. The only mistake made was mine - I broke the fan connector. Nonetheless once that was fixed it fired right up and now the kids have their first computer and it cost the princely sum of $38 (used parts).

So that mostly catches us up. There's a bit more I can cover but for now this at least gets me back on track.

Once again, sorry for the radio silence. I'm mostly all caught up on work so hopefully I'll have some fun projects I can dig into in the coming months.

Gregor

 

[Brian R]

"Sorry for the poor quality - with Lightroom down I sort of quit taking photos with my Leica and just used the iPhone. And then I shot verticals for IG... "

Umm, your point and shoots with a phone are better than 90% of all pro photographers.

Thanks for the update and glad to see that at least you did get some riding in. When I was around 20 my friend broke his wrist skiing and decided he didn't want to miss out so just kept on at it. Slowed him down but not enough that I could beat him down the mountain. Hope Scott is on the mend.

 

[azl]

Combine that with continuing issues with Lightroom (I had to manually redirect 12000 photos in my catalog) and I just haven't had the energy.

Gregor

I thought you used Capture One? Why did you switch to Lightroom? I considered using Capture One but Lightroom catalogs my images.



Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

 

[sakurama]

I thought you used Capture One? Why did you switch to Lightroom? I considered using Capture One but Lightroom catalogs my images.

I use CaptureOne for all my professional work. My personal work was in iPhoto years ago, then Aperture and when that was discontinued the only cataloging option left was either a dumbed down iPhoto or Lightroom.

I am looking into converting the Lightroom catalog over to CaptureOne as they now have a catalog feature. The main issue is Lightroom is very picky about file location and moving files outside of Lightroom yields the sort of issues I ended up having - complete loss of catalogs or organization. CaptureOne is more flexible and adaptable and also a better raw converter. When I started keeping personal files separate I didn't foresee the eventual professional level point and shoots like my Leica.

So, once I recover from this I'm going to look at migrating the 100k or so images to CaptureOne and be done with Lightroom for good. But that's a heavy lift and like moving in general you only want to do it once.

Gregor