Bessy
Well-known member
*Saving this first post for potential future table of contents and current state of affairs as life and shop progresses, as I've seen some of the very long threads do. After all they say fake it until you make it right?
Between 485 & 705 SQ/FT Resistentialism Garage
- Thread starter Bessy
- Start date
Workspaces between 485 and 705 squarefeet.
Hi, I'm Corey but many of you know me here as Bessy (more on that later). I'm newly 28, newly married (to my girlfriend of six years) and I'm a garage-aholic as my now-wife likes to remind me. Forgive me in advance for what may seem like endless ramblings of a nutcase. I'll try my best to inject lots of photos and humor into the thread as I go, in the hopes of keeping some of you inspired, (and entertained) as many of you all have me.
I'm hoping that this thread is the start of something that I will keep up with for years to come, as we navigate to new horizons and (hopefully bigger and better garages).
Now, I'm not going to pretend I haven't tried, and failed, to maintain a thread about my workspace in the past (if you're interested, there are a few posts on here somewhere in a thread called "WWGJD" or "What would GJ Do?"... I'll find a link.) This time it will be different (ya right) because I think I've started off on the right foot with a catchy title which I will explain below. Prepare for an English lesson folks:
"Resistentialism" is a neologism coined in 1948 by Paul Jennings in a piece titled "Report on Resistentialism", published in The Spectator. It's defined as "seemingly spiteful behavior manifested by inanimate objects", and I chose this title for that very reason; not unlike many of you here, likely, I feel that sometimes, tools, toys, vehicles, and other inanimate objects really might be out to get me, whether they be a missing 10mm wrench I just put down, or some clever German engineer who proudly made his Christmas bonus due to his genius, gaining a few inches of cabin space at the cost of making the oil filter unnecessarily difficult to get at.
English/Philosophy lesson complete. On to garage things.
My current set up is 23×29ish interior dimensions and belongs to my late Grandmother. My wife and I moved into the loft above said garage at the beginning of the pandemic, and I "took over" the garage below according to my lovely Grandma. In this space, I like to do a variety of things, from 3D printing, vehicle maintenance, a never complete restoration of an old Boston Whaler 13' hull, and countless other projects at varying degrees of incompleteness. There's a chance that one might conclude that I've likely got some level of undiagnosed ADD, by the look of my shop.
Onto pics, once I get back to a proper computer to organize them.
Stay tuned.
I'm hoping that this thread is the start of something that I will keep up with for years to come, as we navigate to new horizons and (hopefully bigger and better garages).
Now, I'm not going to pretend I haven't tried, and failed, to maintain a thread about my workspace in the past (if you're interested, there are a few posts on here somewhere in a thread called "WWGJD" or "What would GJ Do?"... I'll find a link.) This time it will be different (ya right) because I think I've started off on the right foot with a catchy title which I will explain below. Prepare for an English lesson folks:
"Resistentialism" is a neologism coined in 1948 by Paul Jennings in a piece titled "Report on Resistentialism", published in The Spectator. It's defined as "seemingly spiteful behavior manifested by inanimate objects", and I chose this title for that very reason; not unlike many of you here, likely, I feel that sometimes, tools, toys, vehicles, and other inanimate objects really might be out to get me, whether they be a missing 10mm wrench I just put down, or some clever German engineer who proudly made his Christmas bonus due to his genius, gaining a few inches of cabin space at the cost of making the oil filter unnecessarily difficult to get at.
English/Philosophy lesson complete. On to garage things.
My current set up is 23×29ish interior dimensions and belongs to my late Grandmother. My wife and I moved into the loft above said garage at the beginning of the pandemic, and I "took over" the garage below according to my lovely Grandma. In this space, I like to do a variety of things, from 3D printing, vehicle maintenance, a never complete restoration of an old Boston Whaler 13' hull, and countless other projects at varying degrees of incompleteness. There's a chance that one might conclude that I've likely got some level of undiagnosed ADD, by the look of my shop.
Onto pics, once I get back to a proper computer to organize them.
Stay tuned.
PugetDude
ALLIANCE MEMBER
Along for the ride...
I took sick today, but after a good long nap, I think I've got enough energy to get this thread up and running.
I started young, working out of the back (11x17') portion of my Dad's woodshop, tinkering on lawnmowers and the likes. My first foray into internal combustion engines was at about the age of 10-12 when I deconstructed an old pig of a Chrysler outboard motor (I still have the main drive shaft from that engine kicking around the garage at my parents' place). Unfortunately, I got stalled out at some slot-head screws that were too marred up to remove (my first experience with the spiteful nature of inanimate objects), so we scrapped the project there without diving too far into the head. I did learn lots about taking sh*t apart during that project, but less so about putting it back together.
I've never been one to take a tonne of photos unless they suited me for remembering part numbers or the correct linkages for a given assembly, so I don't have a lot of good shareable pics from early on in this stage. As I got older - 13 or so - I adopted Bessy, the 1971 Sears Suburban 12 tractor in my profile photo. Bessy came to me with a 42" deck and 40" dozer blade, and would take the place of a smaller Cub Cadet 1015 of my Grandfather's, that just would not stop throwing drive belts to the transaxle (resistentialism again). This Suburban turned out to be a much larger, much more capable machine, so long as the blades remained sharp. This upped my lawn mowing game from 32 to 42" of cutting width, and allowed me to take on many larger customers and projects, as I experimented with grading with the blade, snow removal in the winter, and yanking stumps using sheer brute force of that little tractor. It was even hefty enough to launch my little 13' whaler on the overkill tandem axle trailer that it came with, though I did end up blowing out a steering tie rod end pulling the raft out one fall. The thread name starts to make sense, now doesn't it?
I started young, working out of the back (11x17') portion of my Dad's woodshop, tinkering on lawnmowers and the likes. My first foray into internal combustion engines was at about the age of 10-12 when I deconstructed an old pig of a Chrysler outboard motor (I still have the main drive shaft from that engine kicking around the garage at my parents' place). Unfortunately, I got stalled out at some slot-head screws that were too marred up to remove (my first experience with the spiteful nature of inanimate objects), so we scrapped the project there without diving too far into the head. I did learn lots about taking sh*t apart during that project, but less so about putting it back together.
I've never been one to take a tonne of photos unless they suited me for remembering part numbers or the correct linkages for a given assembly, so I don't have a lot of good shareable pics from early on in this stage. As I got older - 13 or so - I adopted Bessy, the 1971 Sears Suburban 12 tractor in my profile photo. Bessy came to me with a 42" deck and 40" dozer blade, and would take the place of a smaller Cub Cadet 1015 of my Grandfather's, that just would not stop throwing drive belts to the transaxle (resistentialism again). This Suburban turned out to be a much larger, much more capable machine, so long as the blades remained sharp. This upped my lawn mowing game from 32 to 42" of cutting width, and allowed me to take on many larger customers and projects, as I experimented with grading with the blade, snow removal in the winter, and yanking stumps using sheer brute force of that little tractor. It was even hefty enough to launch my little 13' whaler on the overkill tandem axle trailer that it came with, though I did end up blowing out a steering tie rod end pulling the raft out one fall. The thread name starts to make sense, now doesn't it?
Attachments
Last edited:
So now let's fast forward to 2020 and the onset of the pandemic. My now wife and I move back to my parents' place on a whim, expecting to work remotely for a couple of weeks from "the cottage" as I called it. Funny, like many others, I expect, I thought to myself "finally, I can get some real work done in the shop, finish off some of my unfinished projects." And. I. Did. Not.
Needing some separation from my parents, my wife and I moved over to my Grandmother's place. This turned out to be ultimately a more or less lateral move, from a privacy standpoint, but I did manage to move up from under 200sf of space to just under 700sf! Fast forward to last year again, and I got into 3d printing in early 2021, had room to pull my car into the garage to actually work on it on concrete rather than the ground, and life was about good. Did I get any more projects completed, yes, but were they new projects that caused me to neglect some old ones? also yes. Of the projects completed in the new space, a few oil changes, installation of a new accessory hitch on the GSW, and a few items for the wife including a wine rack (not my best work) and charcuterie board.
Needing some separation from my parents, my wife and I moved over to my Grandmother's place. This turned out to be ultimately a more or less lateral move, from a privacy standpoint, but I did manage to move up from under 200sf of space to just under 700sf! Fast forward to last year again, and I got into 3d printing in early 2021, had room to pull my car into the garage to actually work on it on concrete rather than the ground, and life was about good. Did I get any more projects completed, yes, but were they new projects that caused me to neglect some old ones? also yes. Of the projects completed in the new space, a few oil changes, installation of a new accessory hitch on the GSW, and a few items for the wife including a wine rack (not my best work) and charcuterie board.
Attachments
Now I will go back to those previous posts as time, photos and recollections permit, but let's fast forward to the present. Back story time: I've posted about this before in other threads, but here are the cliff notes:
- The current property with the 2 car garage and loft we were residing in, is going up for sale. We need to subsequently clear out the loft and garage before June 1.
- My wife and I are gearing up for a move to the US, for work, in roughly the same time frame, mid-May, 2022.
To make a long story short, I was offered a chance to move to the US from Canada for work (better opportunities, better pay, etc. etc.) This has been in the works for going on two years, with countless delays due to COVID. As of last week, the train is picking up speed, when the immigration lawyer says "you could be on the ground in the States in 4-6 weeks". Perfect timing!
As luck would have it, my wife and I, facing no concrete plans for Easter had already decided on a whim to book a few days in Chicago to see the sites and tire kick a few rentals to see what's out there. We're looking more seriously now, it turns out. At least we can figure out hopefully where and what we like as far as leases go while we wait for all of the paperwork to come through on the company's end.
So we're moving. I need to pack.
I've been humming and hawing about how best to move my tools from point-A to point-B, about a 400-500 mile trip. I had considered Rubbermaid Roughneck totes, considered my childhood footlocker and a second similarly designed box for the others that don't fit into that box, and I finally decided to put my OCD/CAP (Chronic Analysis Paralysis) aside and just build something. I built a box... I'm calling this "Phase-one of the Resistentialism Garage Mobile Utility Tower build (MUT for short).
The dimensions of the MUT MK1 are: 24" wide, 19-7/8" deep, 55" high. Casters will bring it closer to 60" tall, when all is said and done. And the goals of the MUT are:
1) zero budget - I'm working with what I have on hand rather than spending any money on MK1.
2) move and store all of my corded and cordless tools, keeping them reasonably safe for the initial 400-500 mile trip; and
3) house my tools in such a way that they're easily accessible, mobile, and don't require any structural fastening (i.e., nothing wall mounted) at our interim destination, as we're likely moving again in 12-18 months and I don't want to deal with landlords and repairs/ damage deposits.
This thing just needs to store my power tools (mechanics tools are in a 40" roll cab) and be mobile, compact and offer grab and go access to my most used tools. MK2 can be pretty, if I ever get that far.
With the shell fastened together with kreg screws, I'm going to start building from the top down (counterintuitive, I know), starting with my drills/drivers and culminating in circ saws at the bottom. The back side will hold lesser used tools, tool bags, etc. I'll likely toss on a pair of doors front and back for the move, but I'm not married to that idea. I could just as easily wrap the MUT in moving blankets and straps, relying on my carpentry to hold all of the requisite tools in place for the trip.
I'll finish this entry tomorrow after I get some sleep.
- The current property with the 2 car garage and loft we were residing in, is going up for sale. We need to subsequently clear out the loft and garage before June 1.
- My wife and I are gearing up for a move to the US, for work, in roughly the same time frame, mid-May, 2022.
To make a long story short, I was offered a chance to move to the US from Canada for work (better opportunities, better pay, etc. etc.) This has been in the works for going on two years, with countless delays due to COVID. As of last week, the train is picking up speed, when the immigration lawyer says "you could be on the ground in the States in 4-6 weeks". Perfect timing!
As luck would have it, my wife and I, facing no concrete plans for Easter had already decided on a whim to book a few days in Chicago to see the sites and tire kick a few rentals to see what's out there. We're looking more seriously now, it turns out. At least we can figure out hopefully where and what we like as far as leases go while we wait for all of the paperwork to come through on the company's end.
So we're moving. I need to pack.
I've been humming and hawing about how best to move my tools from point-A to point-B, about a 400-500 mile trip. I had considered Rubbermaid Roughneck totes, considered my childhood footlocker and a second similarly designed box for the others that don't fit into that box, and I finally decided to put my OCD/CAP (Chronic Analysis Paralysis) aside and just build something. I built a box... I'm calling this "Phase-one of the Resistentialism Garage Mobile Utility Tower build (MUT for short).
The dimensions of the MUT MK1 are: 24" wide, 19-7/8" deep, 55" high. Casters will bring it closer to 60" tall, when all is said and done. And the goals of the MUT are:
1) zero budget - I'm working with what I have on hand rather than spending any money on MK1.
2) move and store all of my corded and cordless tools, keeping them reasonably safe for the initial 400-500 mile trip; and
3) house my tools in such a way that they're easily accessible, mobile, and don't require any structural fastening (i.e., nothing wall mounted) at our interim destination, as we're likely moving again in 12-18 months and I don't want to deal with landlords and repairs/ damage deposits.
This thing just needs to store my power tools (mechanics tools are in a 40" roll cab) and be mobile, compact and offer grab and go access to my most used tools. MK2 can be pretty, if I ever get that far.
With the shell fastened together with kreg screws, I'm going to start building from the top down (counterintuitive, I know), starting with my drills/drivers and culminating in circ saws at the bottom. The back side will hold lesser used tools, tool bags, etc. I'll likely toss on a pair of doors front and back for the move, but I'm not married to that idea. I could just as easily wrap the MUT in moving blankets and straps, relying on my carpentry to hold all of the requisite tools in place for the trip.
I'll finish this entry tomorrow after I get some sleep.
PugetDude
ALLIANCE MEMBER
Consider buying an upright metal office cabinet...
Wow, it turns out it really hasn't been nearly as long as I thought since I last posted in this thread (not giving myself any credit here, don't worry!)
A little bit of background before we get into the garage talk, (this is the boring life stuff that we all post and I admittedly cringe at from time to time, so feel free to call me a hypocrite, for including it here). It speaks to mindset, if nothing else.
Cliff notes for those who had been following along early on in this thread:
We're less than a year into the pandemic, I get offered the job opportunity of a lifetime, a move down to the US, which I think I left off with in my last post here. To make a long sorry short, we were going to be down in the US at the beginning of 2021. Then we weren't. Then it was going to be fall, 2021, then it wasn't. Then... Then... Then... Which brings us to the last post here from April, where we are ready and things are happening. We've lined up a place, we're packing boxes... And it falls through.
So
we left off in April, my wife gave her company notice that she was leaving, I basically told the company to **** or get off the pot, because we were all line up on our end. And they decided to ****. By **** I mean they made a lowball offer and justify it by saying that because the whole company had gone remote, the business case didn't really fit the way it did when the offer was originally made. I won't bore you all with the details beyond that, other than to say, now we are on one income, and have to figure out what we're going to do next.
Back up a bit to February 2022, we had just found out my wife was pregnant (this was planned, based on the assumption that she was going to be unable to work in the US for at least a year, due to the visa situation). This unfortunately ended in an early miscarriage followed by a second pregnancy (a fluke and not at all planned) that we also lost. This is all right around the time of my last post, just as all of this other stuff was happening as well with work, so we suspect stress to be a contributing factor.
So we're having a hard time, dealing with the loss of a family member, two miscarriages, and now we're on one income. At least we knew now that our plans were completely out the window, so that's kindof like a clean slate, right? Right.
This left us with the prospect of "where do we go now, what do we do?" As long as we stay in Canada, we can basically go anywhere... So instead of getting on a plane and heading for the mountains, we settled about an hour south of where we were living with my parents, to London, ON, where we found a nice 2 bed, 1 bath bungalow for rent with a finished but not separated basement, within our price range. For those who don't know, this is ultra rare, that a house like this would come up and not have the basement separated as a separate unit. It was in our price range (also rare, because in that range all we were seeing were basement apartments or walk ups), so we put our name in. We were about the fourth or fifth interested couple, but we ended up getting a call a day or so later telling us that it was ours if we could basically turn around right then and there and sign. I left out the most important part.
Behind the house, tucked in, invisible from the street was a 24x34' heated and insulated three car garage! This brings us to July 2022.
More to come, I promise!
A little bit of background before we get into the garage talk, (this is the boring life stuff that we all post and I admittedly cringe at from time to time, so feel free to call me a hypocrite, for including it here). It speaks to mindset, if nothing else.
Cliff notes for those who had been following along early on in this thread:
We're less than a year into the pandemic, I get offered the job opportunity of a lifetime, a move down to the US, which I think I left off with in my last post here. To make a long sorry short, we were going to be down in the US at the beginning of 2021. Then we weren't. Then it was going to be fall, 2021, then it wasn't. Then... Then... Then... Which brings us to the last post here from April, where we are ready and things are happening. We've lined up a place, we're packing boxes... And it falls through.
So
we left off in April, my wife gave her company notice that she was leaving, I basically told the company to **** or get off the pot, because we were all line up on our end. And they decided to ****. By **** I mean they made a lowball offer and justify it by saying that because the whole company had gone remote, the business case didn't really fit the way it did when the offer was originally made. I won't bore you all with the details beyond that, other than to say, now we are on one income, and have to figure out what we're going to do next. Back up a bit to February 2022, we had just found out my wife was pregnant (this was planned, based on the assumption that she was going to be unable to work in the US for at least a year, due to the visa situation). This unfortunately ended in an early miscarriage followed by a second pregnancy (a fluke and not at all planned) that we also lost. This is all right around the time of my last post, just as all of this other stuff was happening as well with work, so we suspect stress to be a contributing factor.
So we're having a hard time, dealing with the loss of a family member, two miscarriages, and now we're on one income. At least we knew now that our plans were completely out the window, so that's kindof like a clean slate, right? Right.
This left us with the prospect of "where do we go now, what do we do?" As long as we stay in Canada, we can basically go anywhere... So instead of getting on a plane and heading for the mountains, we settled about an hour south of where we were living with my parents, to London, ON, where we found a nice 2 bed, 1 bath bungalow for rent with a finished but not separated basement, within our price range. For those who don't know, this is ultra rare, that a house like this would come up and not have the basement separated as a separate unit. It was in our price range (also rare, because in that range all we were seeing were basement apartments or walk ups), so we put our name in. We were about the fourth or fifth interested couple, but we ended up getting a call a day or so later telling us that it was ours if we could basically turn around right then and there and sign. I left out the most important part.
Behind the house, tucked in, invisible from the street was a 24x34' heated and insulated three car garage! This brings us to July 2022.
More to come, I promise!
Attachments
So, it's now July 2022. I'll skip the whole moving fiasco because it's just not that interesting, and get right to the shop. I'll remind everyone, for all intents and purposes our life plan just took a few giant leaps backward, but at least I've got a shop again, which is something that I really wasn't able to say from the time we moved out of the loft. I know it's only about 48 s.f. bigger, but that extra square footage really did make this garage feel significant! Because this is the case, and since my lovely wife is (was) unemployed at this point in time, we determined that we were putting off the "buy a house" plans indefinitely. This was made considerably easier on account of this property fitting almost all of our needs at this stage. We had been living very much in a state of uncertainty for so long at this point that we made the decision to stick it out renting and that it was ok to spend a little bit on ourselves and on eachother while we figure things out (the housing market was still too hot to touch, and we didn't exactly have the security of two incomes at this point to get a favourable mortgage rate).
Back to the garage:
The garage has been divided into two areas by one of the previous owners. There is a single side, approximately 9'6" by 23' with an 8'x7' door, and a double side which comes in at around 23x23' with two 9'x7' doors. Now several things in this building don't make a whole lot of sense to me (the electrical being the biggest and most frustrating of all) but since it's a rental, it is what it is. Another questionable design feature I think I have figured out: The area that houses the steel-topped bench in the back left corner, leads me to believe the builder was encroaching on a setback at that corner of the property (it's pretty tight to the back corner of the lot) and the owner was required to remove some depth from that third bay to get a permit. It would seem to me that he planned to subsequently blow out half of the back wall and extend the third bay to the full 23' depth after the inspection was complete, as that really appears to be what has been done. The roofline all appears to be the same, which only leaves more questions.
I've spent many hours trying my best to figure out how to get the power I need for all of the tools and equipment that I've moved in since we got here. The electrical, including various fuse and breaker panels in unusual spots, leads me to believe that the builder was either a highly skilled raccoon, or an amateur electrician with a drinking problem. We've got lights and receptacles running off of 10amp fuses, 20 amp fuses, one or two 30 amps, giant breaker switches that control nothing. It's a mess, but we make it work.
I spent the first summer mostly getting things into a semi state of organization, repairing my old 2009 toro pushmower (sourcing what I and the local Toro dealer are convinced may be the last remaining carburetor in North America that would fit that machine), and diving into a few small woodworking projects. A friend of my Dad's who lived not far from our new place was cleaning out his shop and sold me a few smaller tools including a small delta bandsaw, benchtop router table, and several bar clamps to get me off the ground. Work was steady in 2022 and I was fortunate enough to have a pretty good year financially, which allowed me to pick up a new miter saw, planer and drill press (tools that I formerly borrowed from my Dad because he was around the corner when we were in Port Franks), and even a small $25 delta table saw to get me started.
I put that small saw through its paces, built a few Christmas gifts, repaired a few rotten boards on the deck, and made a few pieces of shop furniture, though it left much to be desired.
Then came December...
Back to the garage:
The garage has been divided into two areas by one of the previous owners. There is a single side, approximately 9'6" by 23' with an 8'x7' door, and a double side which comes in at around 23x23' with two 9'x7' doors. Now several things in this building don't make a whole lot of sense to me (the electrical being the biggest and most frustrating of all) but since it's a rental, it is what it is. Another questionable design feature I think I have figured out: The area that houses the steel-topped bench in the back left corner, leads me to believe the builder was encroaching on a setback at that corner of the property (it's pretty tight to the back corner of the lot) and the owner was required to remove some depth from that third bay to get a permit. It would seem to me that he planned to subsequently blow out half of the back wall and extend the third bay to the full 23' depth after the inspection was complete, as that really appears to be what has been done. The roofline all appears to be the same, which only leaves more questions.
I've spent many hours trying my best to figure out how to get the power I need for all of the tools and equipment that I've moved in since we got here. The electrical, including various fuse and breaker panels in unusual spots, leads me to believe that the builder was either a highly skilled raccoon, or an amateur electrician with a drinking problem. We've got lights and receptacles running off of 10amp fuses, 20 amp fuses, one or two 30 amps, giant breaker switches that control nothing. It's a mess, but we make it work.
I spent the first summer mostly getting things into a semi state of organization, repairing my old 2009 toro pushmower (sourcing what I and the local Toro dealer are convinced may be the last remaining carburetor in North America that would fit that machine), and diving into a few small woodworking projects. A friend of my Dad's who lived not far from our new place was cleaning out his shop and sold me a few smaller tools including a small delta bandsaw, benchtop router table, and several bar clamps to get me off the ground. Work was steady in 2022 and I was fortunate enough to have a pretty good year financially, which allowed me to pick up a new miter saw, planer and drill press (tools that I formerly borrowed from my Dad because he was around the corner when we were in Port Franks), and even a small $25 delta table saw to get me started.
I put that small saw through its paces, built a few Christmas gifts, repaired a few rotten boards on the deck, and made a few pieces of shop furniture, though it left much to be desired.
Then came December...
Attachments
I am utterly terrible at keeping up with this thread. Today is no different as I interrupt your regularly (un)scheduled programming for a special update:
It was a special weekend for my family and me. I promise, (or at least I hope) that it's a worthwhile read. My wife and I headed to my parents' place Friday night to spend the long weekend, or most of it, with family.
To really nail the importance of this weekend I need to go back 30-or-so years, to what was my first opportunity to travel extensively by water. My parents took me on my first multi-week boat trip when I was about 4 months old, traveling through the Trent-Severn waterway on my Dad's 25' Trojan cabin cruiser. (This is not a photo from that trip, but just a good shot of Dad and I on Mistacall.)
Dad was a railroader by trade, and in the days before cell phones we popular, it was common for railroaders to occasionally miss a call for service. In the spirit of this accidental-but-not-always-really-accidental practice, my Dad named this boat "Mistacall".
On this trip through the Trent Severn Waterway, my parents would meet other travelers on boats small and large. One such traveler that my parents came across, happened to be progressing his way through "The Great Loop", a ~6,000-mile journey also known as "Chasing 80". The idea of the trip is that it is possible to travel in such a way that you spend all year round in approximately 80-degree weather. Well my dear ol' Dad, barely much older than I am now, decided pretty much there and then, that he would one day become a "Looper" like this gentleman we met in the TSW.
As I grew up, we sold that Trojan, and progressed through a number of boats from a 14' Lund, 17' O'Day Daysailer, 23' Paceship pocketcruiser, 26' custom built center console trawler, and eventually, my parents' retirement home and current vessel, a 1978 Marine Trader 40 Europa. For anyone who's ever named a boat, it's not always easy. in 2012 when the Marine Trader was purchased, we went through several iterations, from "College Fund" to "One Red Tin Boat" (a play on Kyle McDonald's "One-Red-Paperclip" trading experiment.) - The tin boat name was my second-best idea, as Dad traded up from a 14' Lund Big Fisherman aluminum boat to a 26' Inland Seas center-console trawler, which was subsequently taken as partial trade for the Marine Trader.
Finally, I did win over my parents with "Nautoncall", because rather than missing calls on the Trojan, even though he was still seven years away from retirement, the plan was to retire on this boat and take it on the loop, where he would be not on call anymore. Dad and I would go on to take Nautoncall on the "Sesquicentennial Circle Tour" in 2017, spending 39 days aboard Nauti (as she is affectionately nicknamed) as we traveled the "Canadian Loop", circumnavigating Lakes Huron, Erie, Ontario, and Georgian Bay, in practice for him and my mother to begin the Great Loop, two years later. Mom didn't have as many holidays as Dad had amassed with his job, so she came on for a week or so at a time in between work. In all, we had five other crew on and off the boat throughout the trip, but Dad and I went all the way!
Now, on September 14, 2019, Mom and Dad - a few days after being given the go-ahead by the doctor (having broken his ankle less than a week into retirement) set sail for their 25-years-in-the-making Great Loop trip.
They would reach FL on November 24, 2019, where they would spend the next four months traveling south, exploring islands, and meeting new people. My wife and I joined them for two weeks in February 2020 to spend my birthday in the sun, returning home only a week or so before COVID was declared a pandemic. In March 2020, my parents made the tough decision to return to Canada, coincidentally just before the border closed for non-essential travel. The tough decision was made to pull Nauti from the water and store her on land in Indiantown, FL, and thankfully that choice was made. At the time nobody knew how long she would stay "on the hard", in the Florida sun. COVID and the death of my Grandmother stalled my parents' return to Nauti until the first part of 2022. When they were finally able to travel again Feb 5th, 2022, my parents were able to put Nauti back in the water where she belongs on Feb 25, after putting in many hours and thousands of dollars in repair/cleanup/restoration, after spending all that time in the unforgiving conditions. Not to be deterred, they spent the remainder of the winter in the Keys before turning back northbound in spring 2022. With several thousands of miles under her keel, Nauti safely carried my parents across her wake on August 6th, 2022, bringing the trip to a close and adding my parents to the list of 227 "Loopers" to cross their wake in 2022.
After spending the remainder of the summer a ways north of her home port, my parents opted to pull Nauti from the water in September 2022, placing her in indoor storage. There, Dad completed a (mostly solo and certainly extensive) refit, well beyond what he was capable of doing in FL earlier in the year.
Back to regularly (unscheduled) programming:
Sunday was a wash as far as weather, with a gnarly cold front and rain most of the day. I awoke at 5:00am to put a 13lb brisket on the smoker, to serve to my and my BIL's families. We came home late last night after dinner and crashed after an already long weekend. We have two cats who can be monsters at night, so we thought it best to come home last night and have one day of relative normalcy before starting the work week on Tuesday. That means that today, being a holiday, I had the opportunity to head out to the shop to continue on some projects of my own. My wife and I relocated the stair lift that the LL had removed from the house (again). This heavy awkward contraption of aluminum and plastic, despite being described by the LL as "almost brand new" was left in the middle of the double bay, to act as a tripping hazard and general annoyance so far for the duration of our tenancy here. I first moved it into the single bay, as that was only used for parking, then moved it to the far west bay this winter to hide it behind the CL14 which was pushed up against the wall. I offered to list the stair lift on Kijiji/Craigslist and did for a time, but ultimately did not renew the ad on account of the LL and I (backed up by pricing in the market) disagreeing on the value of this contraption, by a margin of at least 4-5x. It has now moved yet again to what I hope to be the least annoying resting place, in the back shed, up on an angle because the stupid thing is about 6" longer than the shed is deep.
While my wife worked on her gardens and did some weeding around the yard, I got up the motivation to trim some of the brush at the back of the property, roll the CL14 out of the third bay and into the driveway *(we shouldn't have any rain until at least Tuesday night), and got to work welding up the bow roller mount for CL's trailer. I did not take any pics of this part of the project because I'm an incredibly novice welder and I while I am level-headed enough to take criticism, I just prefer not to in this instance. In my instances between actual progress, I did take a hard look at a new concept that I am considering; I had this strange idea to, instead of a stand-alone drill press cabinet, potentially mount it on the same mobile base that the bandsaw currently occupies. The idea here is that, provided the base expands to a suitable dimension, I would place the DP on its cabinet, on the mobile base next to the bandsaw facing opposite the working side of the saw. I have some scraps of OSB that I may try to mock up into the approximate dimensions of the cabinet and see how it fits. If I like it, the current in-process DP cabinet will be placed under the scrollsaw or spindle sander instead.
With one of two boats out of the garage (at least temporarily), I considered another reorg to get the miter saw on the opposite (West) wall, where I intended it to go originally, freeing up the east wall of the double bay for an eventual larger jointer, provided free cashflow and a deal on a used jointer that isn't hundreds of km away present themselves at the same time. I'm going to mull this and the DP/Bandsaw idea over some more before I do much else, knowing full well that these are and should be, way down the priority list.
It was a special weekend for my family and me. I promise, (or at least I hope) that it's a worthwhile read. My wife and I headed to my parents' place Friday night to spend the long weekend, or most of it, with family.
To really nail the importance of this weekend I need to go back 30-or-so years, to what was my first opportunity to travel extensively by water. My parents took me on my first multi-week boat trip when I was about 4 months old, traveling through the Trent-Severn waterway on my Dad's 25' Trojan cabin cruiser. (This is not a photo from that trip, but just a good shot of Dad and I on Mistacall.)
Dad was a railroader by trade, and in the days before cell phones we popular, it was common for railroaders to occasionally miss a call for service. In the spirit of this accidental-but-not-always-really-accidental practice, my Dad named this boat "Mistacall".
On this trip through the Trent Severn Waterway, my parents would meet other travelers on boats small and large. One such traveler that my parents came across, happened to be progressing his way through "The Great Loop", a ~6,000-mile journey also known as "Chasing 80". The idea of the trip is that it is possible to travel in such a way that you spend all year round in approximately 80-degree weather. Well my dear ol' Dad, barely much older than I am now, decided pretty much there and then, that he would one day become a "Looper" like this gentleman we met in the TSW.
As I grew up, we sold that Trojan, and progressed through a number of boats from a 14' Lund, 17' O'Day Daysailer, 23' Paceship pocketcruiser, 26' custom built center console trawler, and eventually, my parents' retirement home and current vessel, a 1978 Marine Trader 40 Europa. For anyone who's ever named a boat, it's not always easy. in 2012 when the Marine Trader was purchased, we went through several iterations, from "College Fund" to "One Red Tin Boat" (a play on Kyle McDonald's "One-Red-Paperclip" trading experiment.) - The tin boat name was my second-best idea, as Dad traded up from a 14' Lund Big Fisherman aluminum boat to a 26' Inland Seas center-console trawler, which was subsequently taken as partial trade for the Marine Trader.
Finally, I did win over my parents with "Nautoncall", because rather than missing calls on the Trojan, even though he was still seven years away from retirement, the plan was to retire on this boat and take it on the loop, where he would be not on call anymore. Dad and I would go on to take Nautoncall on the "Sesquicentennial Circle Tour" in 2017, spending 39 days aboard Nauti (as she is affectionately nicknamed) as we traveled the "Canadian Loop", circumnavigating Lakes Huron, Erie, Ontario, and Georgian Bay, in practice for him and my mother to begin the Great Loop, two years later. Mom didn't have as many holidays as Dad had amassed with his job, so she came on for a week or so at a time in between work. In all, we had five other crew on and off the boat throughout the trip, but Dad and I went all the way!
Now, on September 14, 2019, Mom and Dad - a few days after being given the go-ahead by the doctor (having broken his ankle less than a week into retirement) set sail for their 25-years-in-the-making Great Loop trip.
They would reach FL on November 24, 2019, where they would spend the next four months traveling south, exploring islands, and meeting new people. My wife and I joined them for two weeks in February 2020 to spend my birthday in the sun, returning home only a week or so before COVID was declared a pandemic. In March 2020, my parents made the tough decision to return to Canada, coincidentally just before the border closed for non-essential travel. The tough decision was made to pull Nauti from the water and store her on land in Indiantown, FL, and thankfully that choice was made. At the time nobody knew how long she would stay "on the hard", in the Florida sun. COVID and the death of my Grandmother stalled my parents' return to Nauti until the first part of 2022. When they were finally able to travel again Feb 5th, 2022, my parents were able to put Nauti back in the water where she belongs on Feb 25, after putting in many hours and thousands of dollars in repair/cleanup/restoration, after spending all that time in the unforgiving conditions. Not to be deterred, they spent the remainder of the winter in the Keys before turning back northbound in spring 2022. With several thousands of miles under her keel, Nauti safely carried my parents across her wake on August 6th, 2022, bringing the trip to a close and adding my parents to the list of 227 "Loopers" to cross their wake in 2022.
After spending the remainder of the summer a ways north of her home port, my parents opted to pull Nauti from the water in September 2022, placing her in indoor storage. There, Dad completed a (mostly solo and certainly extensive) refit, well beyond what he was capable of doing in FL earlier in the year.
Despite complications and some questionable handling by the marina, Nauti's 21-month stay indoors ended with her once again entering the water this past Friday, June 28th. On Saturday my sister, BIL, wife, and I traveled to Goderich, ON, to reinstall the hard top and do some cleanup, so my parents could take their new two-month-old grandson (my nephew) on his first-ever boat ride! I told you it would all be worth it!
Back to regularly (unscheduled) programming:
Sunday was a wash as far as weather, with a gnarly cold front and rain most of the day. I awoke at 5:00am to put a 13lb brisket on the smoker, to serve to my and my BIL's families. We came home late last night after dinner and crashed after an already long weekend. We have two cats who can be monsters at night, so we thought it best to come home last night and have one day of relative normalcy before starting the work week on Tuesday. That means that today, being a holiday, I had the opportunity to head out to the shop to continue on some projects of my own. My wife and I relocated the stair lift that the LL had removed from the house (again). This heavy awkward contraption of aluminum and plastic, despite being described by the LL as "almost brand new" was left in the middle of the double bay, to act as a tripping hazard and general annoyance so far for the duration of our tenancy here. I first moved it into the single bay, as that was only used for parking, then moved it to the far west bay this winter to hide it behind the CL14 which was pushed up against the wall. I offered to list the stair lift on Kijiji/Craigslist and did for a time, but ultimately did not renew the ad on account of the LL and I (backed up by pricing in the market) disagreeing on the value of this contraption, by a margin of at least 4-5x. It has now moved yet again to what I hope to be the least annoying resting place, in the back shed, up on an angle because the stupid thing is about 6" longer than the shed is deep.
While my wife worked on her gardens and did some weeding around the yard, I got up the motivation to trim some of the brush at the back of the property, roll the CL14 out of the third bay and into the driveway *(we shouldn't have any rain until at least Tuesday night), and got to work welding up the bow roller mount for CL's trailer. I did not take any pics of this part of the project because I'm an incredibly novice welder and I while I am level-headed enough to take criticism, I just prefer not to in this instance. In my instances between actual progress, I did take a hard look at a new concept that I am considering; I had this strange idea to, instead of a stand-alone drill press cabinet, potentially mount it on the same mobile base that the bandsaw currently occupies. The idea here is that, provided the base expands to a suitable dimension, I would place the DP on its cabinet, on the mobile base next to the bandsaw facing opposite the working side of the saw. I have some scraps of OSB that I may try to mock up into the approximate dimensions of the cabinet and see how it fits. If I like it, the current in-process DP cabinet will be placed under the scrollsaw or spindle sander instead.
With one of two boats out of the garage (at least temporarily), I considered another reorg to get the miter saw on the opposite (West) wall, where I intended it to go originally, freeing up the east wall of the double bay for an eventual larger jointer, provided free cashflow and a deal on a used jointer that isn't hundreds of km away present themselves at the same time. I'm going to mull this and the DP/Bandsaw idea over some more before I do much else, knowing full well that these are and should be, way down the priority list.
Attachments
Yesterday was a good day. A good day for me anyway. And I write this as much for my own musings as for anyone actually reading it.
Yesterday I didn't finish a project, but I can see the finish line, as far as this leg is concerned anyway. I call it a leg, but in reality, it's a side quest entirely.
What made yesterday a good day was from the time I woke up to the time I went to bed, the majority of my shop time was actually (for me anyway) highly productive. Really for much of my lifelong interest in shops and tools and making stuff, I've had infinitely more fundamentally unproductive days than productive ones, sometimes spending hours wandering in the shop, picking things up and putting them down, analysing, talking to myself and being generally more stressed out than relieving stress the way hobbies are supposed to.
I've never been formally diagnosed, but I'm a very classical example of Adult ADHD, and even the CMHA self-assessment tool (completed by myself and by my wife on her perspective of my rankings, indicate pretty clearly that I fit the criteria. I will be seeking formal diagnosis, because it is in all honesty debilitating at times.
I have questioned, over and over, why I have such a fascination with this lifestyle of making, tools, equipment, etc, when I very rarely get something to a point where I am fully satisfied with the completeness of a project, or fail to finish at all. I am the definition of "perfection is the enemy of progress" to the point that I, probably should get that tattooed on my forehead to remind myself of it.
But the project that I started yesterday, and will continue with today (and to a significant degree "complete"), is imperfect. It uses some new parts/components, and some old stuff that I had laying around the shop, and it's probably a good example of something that will make my eye twitch for some time, despite being overall, fully functional.
I am the kind of person who works most effectively with a clean, uncluttered, workspace, where everything I need is in reach and I don't need to spend time looking for things. At the same time, I'm the kind of person who creates clutter like a tornado, and I do spend a considerable amount of time (substantially more than actually working in the shop) looking for **** to accomplish the task at hand. This project as I have mentioned is imperfect. The cabinet is too tall, many of the drawers are too deep. The drill press does not fit nicely centered on the cabinet -which makes my eye twitch. But the project is representative of "progress prevailing over perfection", and that's why I am so proud of it, even if it's not what I envisioned exactly.
Today, I will finish this side quest, save for actually filling up every drawer with contents - I still have a few steps to go before that is possible. But the station itself will be functional, and functionally complete, in short order. I had to fabricate two additional leveling foot brackets to take some of the weight where the two tools meet in the middle, and those will be bolted on shortly. Then I can replace the foam floor tiles around it, move the boat into Bay 2, and move onto new projects.
Thanks for looking! I still have plans to document some of the previous projects and moves that I've made over the last several years, tell my story a bit more, but I'm going to get back to productive activities for now while I've still got a fire lit under my rear.
Cheers,
B.
Yesterday I didn't finish a project, but I can see the finish line, as far as this leg is concerned anyway. I call it a leg, but in reality, it's a side quest entirely.
What made yesterday a good day was from the time I woke up to the time I went to bed, the majority of my shop time was actually (for me anyway) highly productive. Really for much of my lifelong interest in shops and tools and making stuff, I've had infinitely more fundamentally unproductive days than productive ones, sometimes spending hours wandering in the shop, picking things up and putting them down, analysing, talking to myself and being generally more stressed out than relieving stress the way hobbies are supposed to.
I've never been formally diagnosed, but I'm a very classical example of Adult ADHD, and even the CMHA self-assessment tool (completed by myself and by my wife on her perspective of my rankings, indicate pretty clearly that I fit the criteria. I will be seeking formal diagnosis, because it is in all honesty debilitating at times.
I have questioned, over and over, why I have such a fascination with this lifestyle of making, tools, equipment, etc, when I very rarely get something to a point where I am fully satisfied with the completeness of a project, or fail to finish at all. I am the definition of "perfection is the enemy of progress" to the point that I, probably should get that tattooed on my forehead to remind myself of it.
But the project that I started yesterday, and will continue with today (and to a significant degree "complete"), is imperfect. It uses some new parts/components, and some old stuff that I had laying around the shop, and it's probably a good example of something that will make my eye twitch for some time, despite being overall, fully functional.
I am the kind of person who works most effectively with a clean, uncluttered, workspace, where everything I need is in reach and I don't need to spend time looking for things. At the same time, I'm the kind of person who creates clutter like a tornado, and I do spend a considerable amount of time (substantially more than actually working in the shop) looking for **** to accomplish the task at hand. This project as I have mentioned is imperfect. The cabinet is too tall, many of the drawers are too deep. The drill press does not fit nicely centered on the cabinet -which makes my eye twitch. But the project is representative of "progress prevailing over perfection", and that's why I am so proud of it, even if it's not what I envisioned exactly.
Today, I will finish this side quest, save for actually filling up every drawer with contents - I still have a few steps to go before that is possible. But the station itself will be functional, and functionally complete, in short order. I had to fabricate two additional leveling foot brackets to take some of the weight where the two tools meet in the middle, and those will be bolted on shortly. Then I can replace the foam floor tiles around it, move the boat into Bay 2, and move onto new projects.
Thanks for looking! I still have plans to document some of the previous projects and moves that I've made over the last several years, tell my story a bit more, but I'm going to get back to productive activities for now while I've still got a fire lit under my rear.
Cheers,
B.
Jayman17
Well-known member
That's a pretty good consolidation of the area those two machines usually require and having them on a mobile base is handy. Looks like a good spot to park it between those garage doors too. 
Please take a moment to indulge the ramblings of a man nearing his last nerve. I'm sure things will turn out ok, but 2025 really is ramping up the Resistentialism 'round these parts!
Despite what I consider to be my best efforts, I was never much of a journaler(?)... This should have been evident as early as September 2002 when, I, a "gifted" 8-year-old - asked to journal my thoughts on the 9/11 attacks - wrote, "9/11 was bad."
I've tried and failed on several accounts to keep this thread off of life support, hopefully for the entertainment of others, and also to keep track of my own successes, however mild or infrequently they may occur. Alas, despite having a job that depends on my abilities to write intelligibly and succinctly (save for the overabundance of repetition required in government grant applications), my efforts to put down my own thoughts on paper or digitally, remains a futile effort some days. “If you work with your mind, rest with your hands” as I continue to remind myself.
I digress.
For those already tired of my long-windedness, I gift you: cliff notes. You will however have to scroll through the rest in the hopes of seeing any pictures, provided I can get them uploaded.
The good:
- We're moving/have moved.
- We purchased a home with a detached garage.
- We are excited.
The bad:
- I hate moving
- The garage is smaller (first-world problems, I know)
- Resistentialism (or perhaps more accurately, human stupidity) is at an all-time high and I'm paying the price.
September 2024:
We are informed that our landlord is putting the rent up again by the standard 2.5%. He said 3% in the text and just like the last time this occurred, folded like a cheap suit when I informed him that that was an illegal amount and that we would be willing to pay up to the maximum increase allowed by legislation. For anyone keeping track that's a 5.06% increase in two years all things considered. If only my income or minuscule investments made returns like that!
Resigned to the fact that we are relatively happy where we are at, we like the neighborhood, the neighbors are good people, we accept that we're here to stay. I complete the drafting of my never ending shop infrastructure punch list, and decide it's time to start putting away some money for plywood to build some cabinets, work on a few pieces of furniture for the house, and generally settle in for the foreseeable future.
November 2024:
I still have not purchased any of the materials (or the larger tools) desired to build out the shop. I muse over the best options for dust collection that will get me the least obstructive runs to where I envision all of my tools living once I have the shop cleaned up. I built a wall, both for tool storage and to act as a barrier to reduce the amount of dust in the computer, and the amount of smoke in the shop due to the laser that was purchased over the summer.
All the while, unbeknownst to me, my lovely wife is casually scrolling MLS listings. This is something we both do from time to time, casually sending modest houses to each other on occasion, dreaming about what it would be like to live free of eviction anxiety. All before remembering that banks don't want to lend to younger millennials, one with a lumpy income and the other on contract. Until she finds a unicorn...
Our Dream Home:
We've talked a lot about our dream home over the years, feeling often that it was out of reach of our budget until something changes financially. We have some savings, but the interest rates quoted to us in late 2023 early 2024 coupled with the sour looks on bankers faces when we explain our slightly unique financial situation, sours our egos.
She wants a big walk in closet (only half-jokingly with a chandelier), a craft room, reading nook, indoor greenhouse space for plants, and plenty of storage for all our knickknacks.
I want an eat-in kitchen, backyard, with room for a BBQ pit/entertaining space, a home office with a door, and a 2-4 car garage with a beam for a chain fall, and hopefully high enough ceilings for a lift one day. Dreaming, I know, but I've been spoiled by Resistentialism Garage volume 3(?) for the last two and a half years.
and;
We both want a second (at least half) bath, and three bedrooms because we still want kids in the not-too-distant future, and we're both tired of my working out of the living room so office space would be nice, as well.
And most unfortunately, the non-negotiable is that we want to stay in the city, ideally the south end.
Low and behold, in November of 2024, she sends me a link. A 3+1 bed, 2 bath, in the south end, with a legal separate entrance basement unit, a SEVEN CAR GARAGE and an old, but functional two-post lift. Coming in at $489K, in a nice area of town, it's a unicorn of a property. sufficient room in both price and state of finish that sweat equity could net us a cool $700K if done right, if and when we want to sell in a couple of years, but still plenty of room to grow into the home and live out the rest of our days if that's the way the cookie crumbles. I admit I got way too attached to this house - a unicorn, I dub it - without ever setting foot on the property. The only issue: it sold conditionally a mere three days before she found the link.
We didn't buy our incredibly reasonably priced dream home...
We find another place in the north end, a much nicer area of town but not really where we want to be, but again, reasonably priced. This place hasn't been updated in 50 years, so investment wise it's a great opportunity, as is evident by the bidding war. We were outbid on that property (despite my estimation that it needs a minimum of $90K investment to make livable, and $200K to really bring her back to her glory) by almost $200,000.
By this point, we're a week away from our third-anniversary, and a trip to Cuba to spend some time in the sun. We quietly resign ourselves to resume our search after the holidays, when my mother sends me a listing...
Three bedrooms
Two car detached garage
In our price range
More or less move-in ready
We are now three days away from taking off to spend some time in the sun. Since I work predominantly with U.S. clients, I've opted to take off U.S. Thanksgiving. We ask the realtor to book a showing for us to kick the tires. It's not entirely what we want, but it checks some boxes and it's worth looking at. She suggests the week after we return, and I casually ask "How is Friday? I have that day off."
We book a showing for Friday afternoon and do a roughly 30-minute walk-through. The house is impeccably staged, looks super modern inside, and you can hardly tell that it's stood in the same place for ~110 years. The garage is decently sized, on a double lot, and despite a few odds and ends like needing to bring in a laundry pair and likely needing a roof in the next year or two, by my Dad's estimation, it checks a lot of boxes. We put in a 24 hour conditional offer on the property and we take to the skies.
Normal people land in their sunny Caribbean destination (ok we were on the Atlantic side of the island...) grab a frosty, frothy, beverage, and pull up a chair by the pool or the beach. We pull out our phones and spend the next four days of our eight-day vacation negotiating the purchase of our first home. I won't bore you with the details (sure, now he cuts out the boring details...) and just say this. We got the keys to our very first home 13 days after departing the island.
Despite what I consider to be my best efforts, I was never much of a journaler(?)... This should have been evident as early as September 2002 when, I, a "gifted" 8-year-old - asked to journal my thoughts on the 9/11 attacks - wrote, "9/11 was bad."
I've tried and failed on several accounts to keep this thread off of life support, hopefully for the entertainment of others, and also to keep track of my own successes, however mild or infrequently they may occur. Alas, despite having a job that depends on my abilities to write intelligibly and succinctly (save for the overabundance of repetition required in government grant applications), my efforts to put down my own thoughts on paper or digitally, remains a futile effort some days. “If you work with your mind, rest with your hands” as I continue to remind myself.
I digress.
For those already tired of my long-windedness, I gift you: cliff notes. You will however have to scroll through the rest in the hopes of seeing any pictures, provided I can get them uploaded.
The good:
- We're moving/have moved.
- We purchased a home with a detached garage.
- We are excited.
The bad:
- I hate moving
- The garage is smaller (first-world problems, I know)
- Resistentialism (or perhaps more accurately, human stupidity) is at an all-time high and I'm paying the price.
September 2024:
We are informed that our landlord is putting the rent up again by the standard 2.5%. He said 3% in the text and just like the last time this occurred, folded like a cheap suit when I informed him that that was an illegal amount and that we would be willing to pay up to the maximum increase allowed by legislation. For anyone keeping track that's a 5.06% increase in two years all things considered. If only my income or minuscule investments made returns like that!
Resigned to the fact that we are relatively happy where we are at, we like the neighborhood, the neighbors are good people, we accept that we're here to stay. I complete the drafting of my never ending shop infrastructure punch list, and decide it's time to start putting away some money for plywood to build some cabinets, work on a few pieces of furniture for the house, and generally settle in for the foreseeable future.
November 2024:
I still have not purchased any of the materials (or the larger tools) desired to build out the shop. I muse over the best options for dust collection that will get me the least obstructive runs to where I envision all of my tools living once I have the shop cleaned up. I built a wall, both for tool storage and to act as a barrier to reduce the amount of dust in the computer, and the amount of smoke in the shop due to the laser that was purchased over the summer.
All the while, unbeknownst to me, my lovely wife is casually scrolling MLS listings. This is something we both do from time to time, casually sending modest houses to each other on occasion, dreaming about what it would be like to live free of eviction anxiety. All before remembering that banks don't want to lend to younger millennials, one with a lumpy income and the other on contract. Until she finds a unicorn...
Our Dream Home:
We've talked a lot about our dream home over the years, feeling often that it was out of reach of our budget until something changes financially. We have some savings, but the interest rates quoted to us in late 2023 early 2024 coupled with the sour looks on bankers faces when we explain our slightly unique financial situation, sours our egos.
She wants a big walk in closet (only half-jokingly with a chandelier), a craft room, reading nook, indoor greenhouse space for plants, and plenty of storage for all our knickknacks.
I want an eat-in kitchen, backyard, with room for a BBQ pit/entertaining space, a home office with a door, and a 2-4 car garage with a beam for a chain fall, and hopefully high enough ceilings for a lift one day. Dreaming, I know, but I've been spoiled by Resistentialism Garage volume 3(?) for the last two and a half years.
and;
We both want a second (at least half) bath, and three bedrooms because we still want kids in the not-too-distant future, and we're both tired of my working out of the living room so office space would be nice, as well.
And most unfortunately, the non-negotiable is that we want to stay in the city, ideally the south end.
Low and behold, in November of 2024, she sends me a link. A 3+1 bed, 2 bath, in the south end, with a legal separate entrance basement unit, a SEVEN CAR GARAGE and an old, but functional two-post lift. Coming in at $489K, in a nice area of town, it's a unicorn of a property. sufficient room in both price and state of finish that sweat equity could net us a cool $700K if done right, if and when we want to sell in a couple of years, but still plenty of room to grow into the home and live out the rest of our days if that's the way the cookie crumbles. I admit I got way too attached to this house - a unicorn, I dub it - without ever setting foot on the property. The only issue: it sold conditionally a mere three days before she found the link.
We didn't buy our incredibly reasonably priced dream home...
We find another place in the north end, a much nicer area of town but not really where we want to be, but again, reasonably priced. This place hasn't been updated in 50 years, so investment wise it's a great opportunity, as is evident by the bidding war. We were outbid on that property (despite my estimation that it needs a minimum of $90K investment to make livable, and $200K to really bring her back to her glory) by almost $200,000.
By this point, we're a week away from our third-anniversary, and a trip to Cuba to spend some time in the sun. We quietly resign ourselves to resume our search after the holidays, when my mother sends me a listing...
Three bedrooms Two car detached garageIn our price rangeMore or less move-in readyWe are now three days away from taking off to spend some time in the sun. Since I work predominantly with U.S. clients, I've opted to take off U.S. Thanksgiving. We ask the realtor to book a showing for us to kick the tires. It's not entirely what we want, but it checks some boxes and it's worth looking at. She suggests the week after we return, and I casually ask "How is Friday? I have that day off."
We book a showing for Friday afternoon and do a roughly 30-minute walk-through. The house is impeccably staged, looks super modern inside, and you can hardly tell that it's stood in the same place for ~110 years. The garage is decently sized, on a double lot, and despite a few odds and ends like needing to bring in a laundry pair and likely needing a roof in the next year or two, by my Dad's estimation, it checks a lot of boxes. We put in a 24 hour conditional offer on the property and we take to the skies.
Normal people land in their sunny Caribbean destination (ok we were on the Atlantic side of the island...) grab a frosty, frothy, beverage, and pull up a chair by the pool or the beach. We pull out our phones and spend the next four days of our eight-day vacation negotiating the purchase of our first home. I won't bore you with the details (sure, now he cuts out the boring details...) and just say this. We got the keys to our very first home 13 days after departing the island.
Breaking this out into separate posts, because it was getting long-winded for my tastes even. We haven't even touched the Resistentialism portion of the post yet!
The holidays are always a busy time, and I begrudgingly subscribe to the idea that anything you opt to do yourself is going to take three times as long as you expect and cost at least that much more than you think, impart when you factor in:
blood
sweat
tears
Because I am a sensitive man, in touch with my emotions and with skin that - in my office era - remains reasonably supple despite, per my wife's insistence, a "complete and utter lack of skincare routine", this story contains all of the above.
The sweat:
three trips with a fully loaded 15 foot U-haul over the Christmas break, to move approximately half of our belongings.
The tears:
Frustration, Overwhelm, Illness, Exhaustion, Injury...
The blood:
An avulsion of my right index finger due to a disagreement with a box cutter over which side of the T-square to cut on.
I'm trying my best here to cover as much of this in chronological order as I can, so let's back up a bit...
We received the keys 13 days after our offer was accepted. It's an old home, so I'm not expecting everything to be as perfect as it seemed. Remember, by the time we got the keys, we'd been on the property a grand total of twice, for all of 90 minutes. The immediate punch list items are in not necessarily the right order:
1) Prep the laundry room for washer/dryer install
2) Eliminate the three-foot-tall pile of snow that the PO left us in front of the garage door
3) Order and install approximately eight sheets of drywall, mud, and tape the laundry room and frame out, board, mud and tape the craft room and future second bath.
4) Design and order or custom build closets, and figure out some interim kitchen storage ideas because this house has NO FREAKING INTERIOR STORAGE! ... Hey, it's got a double car garage, on a double wide lot in the city, and we came in under budget, we can't have it all.
Because I do not claim to be a sparky and have a healthy fear of electricity, my Dad again comes to the rescue to get our laundry room electrical sorted out so that I could drywall, mud, tape and sand on Jan 2nd and the morning of the 3rd before our washer and dryer arrive that afternoon. The electrical and ventilation was supposed to be a single afternoon task, wire up a plug for the dryer and drill a hole in the wall to install the vent. Robert's your father's brother. I'd cook up some beef sirloin, and we'd have a family style first meal of the year with my dear parents. Three times as long, and at least that much more expensive.
What transpired instead:
The wire running to where the dryer plug is to be installed. Dead. Not a spark or a charge to be found. Lacking any test leads because I really don't do any kind of electrical work, Dad and I grab an extension cord and go searching for the other end of the wire. There is a clear wire termination in the panel which is properly labelled "Dryer" and power at the panel, so why the hell is there not power at the other end of the wire when you flip the breaker on? That is because they are not the same wire. The wire where the plug is to be installed, terminates 6 inches below the ceiling, into thin air, hanging out of the wall in the basement, approximately 1/3 of the way between the dryer location and the panel. So much for that home inspection...
Fortunately for us, we were able to determine that the end of the wire that was connected to the breaker labeled dryer on the panel, terminated in a box about five feet below the wire that hung out of the wall. We were fortunate enough to be able to create a junction in that box, and wire up the dryer plug the next day. Similarly, for the washer, there was no plug installed at all, but we managed to locate what we assume was a box for a previously installed jacuzzi tub, and after blowing a breaker several times trying to run the washer, we managed to get that sorted out as well, by January 5th ish.
It's now nearing the end of January 2nd, our washer and dryer are supposed to be installed less than 24 hours later, and I've hung a grand total of approximately 17 s.f. of drywall out of the approximately 99 s.f. that is directly surrounding the washer and dryer (the remaining room requires another 150 or so square feet of board for completion, before I start framing out additional rooms that do not yet exist), and I have not yet slung any mud or tape. - A side note for myself: I am no longer confident that I purchased enough drywall to complete all phases of this project.
Dad goes on home, to attend to his much more enjoyable retirement gig of being a grandpa to my sister's 7-month-old, and I go on to continue drywalling. The second sheet of drywall comes down, I grab my T-square, line up my marks, and begin my first cut. On my second cut, I line up my T-square at one end of the board, draw a line. Since the board is still longer than my square I do the same in the opposite direction and line up for my cut. Slide out the blade, place my hand on the square to keep it firmly on my line, draw the knife through the paper, over the edge of the T-square which - so it turns out I did not have as firm a grip on as I thought - and clear through the end of my right index finger. It took me about three seconds to realize what I had done, and exactly one second for the blood to start. I don't do well with blood, but I happened to have a recently laundered rag in the vicinity, an old white t-shirt, for maximal dramatic effect when stained with the oxygenated gift of life that pulses through us all, so I wrap it in that and head in the house to break into my house-warming gift of a new first aid kit, compiled by my nurse sister and paramedic future-maybe-someday-brother-in-law.
After 20-30 minutes trying to stop the bleeding, and consulting with the first responders in the family, the decision was made to go into urgent care for stitches.
I did not end up getting stitches, but they gave me a much neater gauze wrap, with some fancy peanut-shaped foam thing that is supposed to aid in clotting and healing bleeding wounds that can't be stitched, and sent me on my way some four hours later.
There are three things from this experience that I can appreciate:
1) The calm nature with which one who deals with blood and bodily fluids daily says "oooh, yep, you did a good job of that one" as she rebandages a poorly wrapped appendage.
2) The fact that despite ultimately leaving the hospital with little more than a bigger bandage, I was validated by the doctor saying "these types of wounds are almost impossible to control at home"; and
2) The simple yet still very cool tools that our emergency technicians use that make it look so damn easy to achieve proper-looking dressings. A quick internet search names this slick little device a "tubular gauze metal applicator cage" and I will for certain be adding one to this new first aid kit that was gifted to us.
Down a digit, my drywall has still yet to be hung, but we do have working laundry in the basement.
The saga continues...
The holidays are always a busy time, and I begrudgingly subscribe to the idea that anything you opt to do yourself is going to take three times as long as you expect and cost at least that much more than you think, impart when you factor in:
bloodsweattearsBecause I am a sensitive man, in touch with my emotions and with skin that - in my office era - remains reasonably supple despite, per my wife's insistence, a "complete and utter lack of skincare routine", this story contains all of the above.
The sweat:
three trips with a fully loaded 15 foot U-haul over the Christmas break, to move approximately half of our belongings.
The tears:
Frustration, Overwhelm, Illness, Exhaustion, Injury...
The blood:
An avulsion of my right index finger due to a disagreement with a box cutter over which side of the T-square to cut on.
I'm trying my best here to cover as much of this in chronological order as I can, so let's back up a bit...
We received the keys 13 days after our offer was accepted. It's an old home, so I'm not expecting everything to be as perfect as it seemed. Remember, by the time we got the keys, we'd been on the property a grand total of twice, for all of 90 minutes. The immediate punch list items are in not necessarily the right order:
1) Prep the laundry room for washer/dryer install
2) Eliminate the three-foot-tall pile of snow that the PO left us in front of the garage door
3) Order and install approximately eight sheets of drywall, mud, and tape the laundry room and frame out, board, mud and tape the craft room and future second bath.
4) Design and order or custom build closets, and figure out some interim kitchen storage ideas because this house has NO FREAKING INTERIOR STORAGE! ... Hey, it's got a double car garage, on a double wide lot in the city, and we came in under budget, we can't have it all.
Because I do not claim to be a sparky and have a healthy fear of electricity, my Dad again comes to the rescue to get our laundry room electrical sorted out so that I could drywall, mud, tape and sand on Jan 2nd and the morning of the 3rd before our washer and dryer arrive that afternoon. The electrical and ventilation was supposed to be a single afternoon task, wire up a plug for the dryer and drill a hole in the wall to install the vent. Robert's your father's brother. I'd cook up some beef sirloin, and we'd have a family style first meal of the year with my dear parents. Three times as long, and at least that much more expensive.
What transpired instead:
The wire running to where the dryer plug is to be installed. Dead. Not a spark or a charge to be found. Lacking any test leads because I really don't do any kind of electrical work, Dad and I grab an extension cord and go searching for the other end of the wire. There is a clear wire termination in the panel which is properly labelled "Dryer" and power at the panel, so why the hell is there not power at the other end of the wire when you flip the breaker on? That is because they are not the same wire. The wire where the plug is to be installed, terminates 6 inches below the ceiling, into thin air, hanging out of the wall in the basement, approximately 1/3 of the way between the dryer location and the panel. So much for that home inspection...
Fortunately for us, we were able to determine that the end of the wire that was connected to the breaker labeled dryer on the panel, terminated in a box about five feet below the wire that hung out of the wall. We were fortunate enough to be able to create a junction in that box, and wire up the dryer plug the next day. Similarly, for the washer, there was no plug installed at all, but we managed to locate what we assume was a box for a previously installed jacuzzi tub, and after blowing a breaker several times trying to run the washer, we managed to get that sorted out as well, by January 5th ish.
It's now nearing the end of January 2nd, our washer and dryer are supposed to be installed less than 24 hours later, and I've hung a grand total of approximately 17 s.f. of drywall out of the approximately 99 s.f. that is directly surrounding the washer and dryer (the remaining room requires another 150 or so square feet of board for completion, before I start framing out additional rooms that do not yet exist), and I have not yet slung any mud or tape. - A side note for myself: I am no longer confident that I purchased enough drywall to complete all phases of this project.
Dad goes on home, to attend to his much more enjoyable retirement gig of being a grandpa to my sister's 7-month-old, and I go on to continue drywalling. The second sheet of drywall comes down, I grab my T-square, line up my marks, and begin my first cut. On my second cut, I line up my T-square at one end of the board, draw a line. Since the board is still longer than my square I do the same in the opposite direction and line up for my cut. Slide out the blade, place my hand on the square to keep it firmly on my line, draw the knife through the paper, over the edge of the T-square which - so it turns out I did not have as firm a grip on as I thought - and clear through the end of my right index finger. It took me about three seconds to realize what I had done, and exactly one second for the blood to start. I don't do well with blood, but I happened to have a recently laundered rag in the vicinity, an old white t-shirt, for maximal dramatic effect when stained with the oxygenated gift of life that pulses through us all, so I wrap it in that and head in the house to break into my house-warming gift of a new first aid kit, compiled by my nurse sister and paramedic future-maybe-someday-brother-in-law.
After 20-30 minutes trying to stop the bleeding, and consulting with the first responders in the family, the decision was made to go into urgent care for stitches.
I did not end up getting stitches, but they gave me a much neater gauze wrap, with some fancy peanut-shaped foam thing that is supposed to aid in clotting and healing bleeding wounds that can't be stitched, and sent me on my way some four hours later.
There are three things from this experience that I can appreciate:
1) The calm nature with which one who deals with blood and bodily fluids daily says "oooh, yep, you did a good job of that one" as she rebandages a poorly wrapped appendage.
2) The fact that despite ultimately leaving the hospital with little more than a bigger bandage, I was validated by the doctor saying "these types of wounds are almost impossible to control at home"; and
2) The simple yet still very cool tools that our emergency technicians use that make it look so damn easy to achieve proper-looking dressings. A quick internet search names this slick little device a "tubular gauze metal applicator cage" and I will for certain be adding one to this new first aid kit that was gifted to us.
Down a digit, my drywall has still yet to be hung, but we do have working laundry in the basement.
The saga continues...
Being down a finger, in particular with an avulsion wound (or a mandolin wound as the ER doc compared it to) means that I could not, for several days, properly grip anything, lift, or really do much around the house, as due to the depth of the cut and the fact that there was exposed layers in colours and textures that are not meant to be viewed by the human eye, meaning that I was now only a few degrees of separation above useless around the house. I am left-handed, which is to my fortune, but it's amazing how many tasks the right index finger is expected to complete on a daily basis, even when you are not in the middle of a house move and renovation job, and how many fewer tasks you can do without slightly elevating the blood pressure in an injured limb.
This past weekend I was able to finally remove the bandages and use my right hand more completely. The tip of my finger still zings with the tenderness of a small child, sending electrical signals right up my arm if pressure is applied in the wrong spot, or at the wrong speed, but my hand is significantly more functional than it was even a few days ago. Which means that it's certainly time for me to get on with projects instead of milking the sick-boy-rules any further.
For those who are aware, we live in the great white someday-maybe-51st-state. That is provided that a snowball ever stand a chance in hell, according to JT. As a result, the snow accumulation up here in the great white north is something that we just need to deal with. Today, in London, ON, it was a balmy -18 with the wind chill (-0.4 freedom units), but the show must go on. I woke up this morning, feeling not necessarily rested, but certainly ready to recover from my no-good-very-bad Monday (a day which saw my waking up on the nastiest day of a flu/cold bug, the recycling truck leave 1/3 of our recycling strewn across the driveway, my choosing the wrong adapter and smoking my KVM switch on my desk, breaking the handle off a new filing cabinet that I just purchased, a faulty garage door remote (that I had only days before changed the battery in, and discovering $200+ worth of spoiled previously frozen food in a cooler that had not made it into the freezer from the week before), and for all intents and purposes, I was feeing ok. My cold was subsiding, work went ok, and I avoided any major mishaps throughout the day. Figuring that my finger is now sufficiently recovered, it was time to tackle the 8-16" of snow in the driveway of the rental house, so that we could organize the next few truckloads out of the garage.
I spent approximately an hour - thoroughly impressed by the little-snow-blower-that-could, as it chewed through 16" powder drifts and cleared out our obscenely long and sloped driveway. Not quite finished, but needing to get back home to get ready for our dance class, I opted to pause on the snow removal and back the blower into the garage. Upon doing so, I powered the blower down in the garage, and as I'm about to leave, disaster struck, as I set my winter-gloved (not work-gloved) hand firmly and squarely on the exhaust manifold of that little blower. I swear it was for less than a second that it sat there, but it was enough to give me a silver-dollar-sized (and ever so slightly polar-bear-shaped) burn, I'd guess somewhere between 1st and 2nd degree, squarely on my left hand. My. Good. Hand.
I'll repeat the neologism that inspired the title of this thread, as I bow down before the machine and declare my surrender. Today, I again suffered the "seemingly spiteful behavior manifested by inanimate objects".
Tomorrow, I will wake again, and walk cautiously throughout the house, making no noise, and remaining respectful of all objects animate or not, in the hopes that my remaining body parts may be spared.
This past weekend I was able to finally remove the bandages and use my right hand more completely. The tip of my finger still zings with the tenderness of a small child, sending electrical signals right up my arm if pressure is applied in the wrong spot, or at the wrong speed, but my hand is significantly more functional than it was even a few days ago. Which means that it's certainly time for me to get on with projects instead of milking the sick-boy-rules any further.
For those who are aware, we live in the great white someday-maybe-51st-state. That is provided that a snowball ever stand a chance in hell, according to JT. As a result, the snow accumulation up here in the great white north is something that we just need to deal with. Today, in London, ON, it was a balmy -18 with the wind chill (-0.4 freedom units), but the show must go on. I woke up this morning, feeling not necessarily rested, but certainly ready to recover from my no-good-very-bad Monday (a day which saw my waking up on the nastiest day of a flu/cold bug, the recycling truck leave 1/3 of our recycling strewn across the driveway, my choosing the wrong adapter and smoking my KVM switch on my desk, breaking the handle off a new filing cabinet that I just purchased, a faulty garage door remote (that I had only days before changed the battery in, and discovering $200+ worth of spoiled previously frozen food in a cooler that had not made it into the freezer from the week before), and for all intents and purposes, I was feeing ok. My cold was subsiding, work went ok, and I avoided any major mishaps throughout the day. Figuring that my finger is now sufficiently recovered, it was time to tackle the 8-16" of snow in the driveway of the rental house, so that we could organize the next few truckloads out of the garage.
I spent approximately an hour - thoroughly impressed by the little-snow-blower-that-could, as it chewed through 16" powder drifts and cleared out our obscenely long and sloped driveway. Not quite finished, but needing to get back home to get ready for our dance class, I opted to pause on the snow removal and back the blower into the garage. Upon doing so, I powered the blower down in the garage, and as I'm about to leave, disaster struck, as I set my winter-gloved (not work-gloved) hand firmly and squarely on the exhaust manifold of that little blower. I swear it was for less than a second that it sat there, but it was enough to give me a silver-dollar-sized (and ever so slightly polar-bear-shaped) burn, I'd guess somewhere between 1st and 2nd degree, squarely on my left hand. My. Good. Hand.
I'll repeat the neologism that inspired the title of this thread, as I bow down before the machine and declare my surrender. Today, I again suffered the "seemingly spiteful behavior manifested by inanimate objects".
Tomorrow, I will wake again, and walk cautiously throughout the house, making no noise, and remaining respectful of all objects animate or not, in the hopes that my remaining body parts may be spared.
Today, I got a win. Not at home, but a win no less, by helping out a good friend with a dead battery, simultaneously reminding myself why I hate the automotive industry, and why I'm glad that I drive a 2015 SportWagen TDI and will until the wheels fall off and the drivers seat falls through the floor.
I should back up. Yesterday was shaping up to be a decent day; My mechanic was able to get some much needed repairs done on the SportWagen, that I had neither the time nor skill to invest in myself. Picking the car up, I whipped over to the Orange box store for some foam to put under the 2×4s that will become a level foundation under our new ikea closet in the master bedroom. I would much rather build our own closet from scratch, but that would be an unnecessary test of patience on both my wife and I, and we have a whole 105 year old home to test our relationship with! In any case, the closet project requires some level of customization anyway as being 105 years old, there is not a level, plumb or square plane in a 5 block radius. I'm happy to call it a happy medium where we can put our own touches on what should be an otherwise straightforward install and still get er built in a reasonable amount of time.
Anyway, I get home, put the insulation on the floor, line up my 2x4s, and realized that I didn't have all four sections of my track for my saw. Off I drive to the old house in search of the track. Upon returning home, I put my saw track in the garage and decide that I best not push my luck, my day is still on the positive side, delays be damned.
As I go in to prepare dinner, disaster strikes, proving that my day is not going to be Wednesday. Pouring boiling water, trying my best not to further burn or mame my remaining functional limbs, the lid slipped out of my hand dumping 90% of the edible contents in a sink of questionable cleanliness, effectively reminding me that my luck streak is still not turned.
Today however, I got lucky. I still haven't got any further on house projects, and opted to get pizza for dinner, but we managed to help out some friends in need. They have come down with a nasty virus that I wouldn't wish on anyone, but we managed to grab them some groceries to keep my and my wife's god children fed. After some acrobatics on my and my wife's parts, we managed to get our friends mini van started for them as well! To whomever decided to put the battery in the back of a '22 Toyota Sienna Hybrid, I hope you dump your pot of vegetables in a dirty sink, as there was clearly no thought put into the use case of the average mini van owner. Being unable to open the back hatch from the outside without a sufficiently charged battery is just cruel. I'm sure the neighbors got a good chuckle watching me squeeze my 5'8" 200lb frame in the side door and over a bunch of children's stuff, to access the battery in behind the second row of seating to connect the jumper cables.
With food in the fridge, grateful friends, and all of my track saw pieces in one place, I will take a breather tonight and give our closet project some attention tomorrow. A win is a win when up against the spiteful machines of the world.
I promise, there will be shop and project pictures to come soon!
Signing off.
I should back up. Yesterday was shaping up to be a decent day; My mechanic was able to get some much needed repairs done on the SportWagen, that I had neither the time nor skill to invest in myself. Picking the car up, I whipped over to the Orange box store for some foam to put under the 2×4s that will become a level foundation under our new ikea closet in the master bedroom. I would much rather build our own closet from scratch, but that would be an unnecessary test of patience on both my wife and I, and we have a whole 105 year old home to test our relationship with! In any case, the closet project requires some level of customization anyway as being 105 years old, there is not a level, plumb or square plane in a 5 block radius. I'm happy to call it a happy medium where we can put our own touches on what should be an otherwise straightforward install and still get er built in a reasonable amount of time.
Anyway, I get home, put the insulation on the floor, line up my 2x4s, and realized that I didn't have all four sections of my track for my saw. Off I drive to the old house in search of the track. Upon returning home, I put my saw track in the garage and decide that I best not push my luck, my day is still on the positive side, delays be damned.
As I go in to prepare dinner, disaster strikes, proving that my day is not going to be Wednesday. Pouring boiling water, trying my best not to further burn or mame my remaining functional limbs, the lid slipped out of my hand dumping 90% of the edible contents in a sink of questionable cleanliness, effectively reminding me that my luck streak is still not turned.
Today however, I got lucky. I still haven't got any further on house projects, and opted to get pizza for dinner, but we managed to help out some friends in need. They have come down with a nasty virus that I wouldn't wish on anyone, but we managed to grab them some groceries to keep my and my wife's god children fed. After some acrobatics on my and my wife's parts, we managed to get our friends mini van started for them as well! To whomever decided to put the battery in the back of a '22 Toyota Sienna Hybrid, I hope you dump your pot of vegetables in a dirty sink, as there was clearly no thought put into the use case of the average mini van owner. Being unable to open the back hatch from the outside without a sufficiently charged battery is just cruel. I'm sure the neighbors got a good chuckle watching me squeeze my 5'8" 200lb frame in the side door and over a bunch of children's stuff, to access the battery in behind the second row of seating to connect the jumper cables.
With food in the fridge, grateful friends, and all of my track saw pieces in one place, I will take a breather tonight and give our closet project some attention tomorrow. A win is a win when up against the spiteful machines of the world.
I promise, there will be shop and project pictures to come soon!
Signing off.
Now it's time for a few pictures!
Yesterday, aided by my wife, and a very VERY good friend, got to work moving the heavy stuff over from the old garage to the new. I say the heavy stuff, knowing full well that what we left at the old place by the end of the day is not necessarily light, but ultimately it's all materials and items (save for one sheet of plywood) that can all fit in my car over multiple trips.
I started the day picking up a 20' U-haul (which I was fortunate enough to accidentally end up with because they didn't have a 15' ready). I met my friend and my wife at the old house, and got to work filling the truck. Anyone who's read the posts this far, will note that back near the end of 2022, not long after moving into the old house, that I acquired several hundred board feet of various lumber, for about $285 at auction. I've built a few things out of the lumber, but having a lack of time in my life, I never really got to make good use out of any of it so far. Much of the wider boards *which are glue-ups of small strips of maple, will likely clean up to become very nice bench tops for the shop. Not nice enough for home furnishing by my wife's admittance, but they'll look good in the shop.
Anyway:
We packed up my large table saw, drill press, and band saw first, then loaded in lumber down both sides of the truck, leaving an aisle in the center. We then packed in my first workbench that I continue to take from place to place, lumber beneath it, on top of it and crammed onto the bottom shelf. We loaded the sand blaster behind that, then filled out the back of the truck with the remaining pieces of our outdoor dining set, and a chair that needs to be stripped. My ultra win of the day: I backed this 20' U-Haul un-aided by anyone to guide me, down our very very narrow driveway in one go in mid-day traffic on our very busy street. I managed to land it in the perfect spot such that the ramp just came in the shop's door!
Onward, we unloaded the truck, and the remaining photos show where we ended off at the end of the evening. I did do a bit of reorganizing after having a bite of dinner, to create this reasonably functional aisle down between some shelving and tool boxes and my bench. I want to eventually get a boat in this side of the shop, so this won't stay the way it is right now, but for now, I like it.
Yesterday, aided by my wife, and a very VERY good friend, got to work moving the heavy stuff over from the old garage to the new. I say the heavy stuff, knowing full well that what we left at the old place by the end of the day is not necessarily light, but ultimately it's all materials and items (save for one sheet of plywood) that can all fit in my car over multiple trips.
I started the day picking up a 20' U-haul (which I was fortunate enough to accidentally end up with because they didn't have a 15' ready). I met my friend and my wife at the old house, and got to work filling the truck. Anyone who's read the posts this far, will note that back near the end of 2022, not long after moving into the old house, that I acquired several hundred board feet of various lumber, for about $285 at auction. I've built a few things out of the lumber, but having a lack of time in my life, I never really got to make good use out of any of it so far. Much of the wider boards *which are glue-ups of small strips of maple, will likely clean up to become very nice bench tops for the shop. Not nice enough for home furnishing by my wife's admittance, but they'll look good in the shop.
Anyway:
We packed up my large table saw, drill press, and band saw first, then loaded in lumber down both sides of the truck, leaving an aisle in the center. We then packed in my first workbench that I continue to take from place to place, lumber beneath it, on top of it and crammed onto the bottom shelf. We loaded the sand blaster behind that, then filled out the back of the truck with the remaining pieces of our outdoor dining set, and a chair that needs to be stripped. My ultra win of the day: I backed this 20' U-Haul un-aided by anyone to guide me, down our very very narrow driveway in one go in mid-day traffic on our very busy street. I managed to land it in the perfect spot such that the ramp just came in the shop's door!
Onward, we unloaded the truck, and the remaining photos show where we ended off at the end of the evening. I did do a bit of reorganizing after having a bite of dinner, to create this reasonably functional aisle down between some shelving and tool boxes and my bench. I want to eventually get a boat in this side of the shop, so this won't stay the way it is right now, but for now, I like it.
Here we go!
Remaining photos (I had them in too high a resolution to upload:
It really doesn't look like as much wood when it's in a pile, but I am still dreading the rest of the wood that needs to move over from the other house (All or most of which is at least short enough in length to get into the back of my Sportwagen).
To orient everyone, to where we are at right now. The Sand Blaster is located in the rear left (S.E.) corner of the shop. I will eventually put it directly under that long shelf and either plumb it into the 2-1/2" dust collection to remove the cloud that tends to disturb the users view, or come up with another solution that doesn't require me to listen to the shop vac. In that back corner of the property, I do plan to eventually relocate the new 80 gal compressor into a small shed off the back of the garage. I'll wait until spring to get that done though, as we've got at least 16" of snow here still.
Next up, you see the old freezer which we still haven't officially decided what we will do with. In all honesty, I'm considering offering it up on FB marketplace as a "free, get it out of my shop" type of deal. it's old and just frankly doesn't fit the new house where we intend to keep our frozen stuff, and while having the extra space is nice, I think we can get away without it. Behind that is the temporary miter station. I will be moving the miter saw to the south wall, eventually. I am currently imagining a dust collection cabinet in the N.E. corner where the saw is now, but depending on when I get around to making the compressor shed off the back, I do want to consider moving the DC out there as well, so I can empty it out outside. Under that loft that runs along the east side of the shop will house a few of my benchtop and mobile tools.
Third shot is just to show how tight things are getting in the disorganized state. I had intended to have some racks already installed on the walls so that when we moved lumber I could just immediately start getting it on the walls, but house projects, and injuries prevented that from getting done. I'll likely have to live like this until at least March.
And finally, a happy accident. When moving stuff off the truck, my buddy asked where I wanted the workbench. I've always had that bench against a wall, in every shop it's been in, but because I needed to make sure there was room for the electrician to wire up the compressor, and because I really didn't yet have a spot in mind, I arbitrarily told him that we'd basically just walk it straight off the truck and set it on the floor and I'd figure out what to do with it later. We then moved the drill press and black toolbox off and placed it at the end, and then put the bandsaw and table saw behind it to the east. What resulted was a nicely sized aisle, where I had tools and storage shelves right behind me, and it seems reasonably functional in it's current position.
I decided last night that instead of having the second shelving unit only a single tier high (bench height essentially) I would add the two pieces together to go the full 6 feet high, then I can put the US General cart next to the other toolbox and have all of that consolidated. The 3d printer will be moving inside the house, I just don't have the space worked out in my office for it just yet, as that requires that I have the table saw up and running to build some cabinetry along the south wall of my office, which is of course well down the list behind kitchen organization, wife's craft room, and the drywall that is still not hung in the laundry room...
I think this means that I won't have wood on the walls until at least April...
Remaining photos (I had them in too high a resolution to upload:
It really doesn't look like as much wood when it's in a pile, but I am still dreading the rest of the wood that needs to move over from the other house (All or most of which is at least short enough in length to get into the back of my Sportwagen).
To orient everyone, to where we are at right now. The Sand Blaster is located in the rear left (S.E.) corner of the shop. I will eventually put it directly under that long shelf and either plumb it into the 2-1/2" dust collection to remove the cloud that tends to disturb the users view, or come up with another solution that doesn't require me to listen to the shop vac. In that back corner of the property, I do plan to eventually relocate the new 80 gal compressor into a small shed off the back of the garage. I'll wait until spring to get that done though, as we've got at least 16" of snow here still.
Next up, you see the old freezer which we still haven't officially decided what we will do with. In all honesty, I'm considering offering it up on FB marketplace as a "free, get it out of my shop" type of deal. it's old and just frankly doesn't fit the new house where we intend to keep our frozen stuff, and while having the extra space is nice, I think we can get away without it. Behind that is the temporary miter station. I will be moving the miter saw to the south wall, eventually. I am currently imagining a dust collection cabinet in the N.E. corner where the saw is now, but depending on when I get around to making the compressor shed off the back, I do want to consider moving the DC out there as well, so I can empty it out outside. Under that loft that runs along the east side of the shop will house a few of my benchtop and mobile tools.
Third shot is just to show how tight things are getting in the disorganized state. I had intended to have some racks already installed on the walls so that when we moved lumber I could just immediately start getting it on the walls, but house projects, and injuries prevented that from getting done. I'll likely have to live like this until at least March.
And finally, a happy accident. When moving stuff off the truck, my buddy asked where I wanted the workbench. I've always had that bench against a wall, in every shop it's been in, but because I needed to make sure there was room for the electrician to wire up the compressor, and because I really didn't yet have a spot in mind, I arbitrarily told him that we'd basically just walk it straight off the truck and set it on the floor and I'd figure out what to do with it later. We then moved the drill press and black toolbox off and placed it at the end, and then put the bandsaw and table saw behind it to the east. What resulted was a nicely sized aisle, where I had tools and storage shelves right behind me, and it seems reasonably functional in it's current position.
I decided last night that instead of having the second shelving unit only a single tier high (bench height essentially) I would add the two pieces together to go the full 6 feet high, then I can put the US General cart next to the other toolbox and have all of that consolidated. The 3d printer will be moving inside the house, I just don't have the space worked out in my office for it just yet, as that requires that I have the table saw up and running to build some cabinetry along the south wall of my office, which is of course well down the list behind kitchen organization, wife's craft room, and the drywall that is still not hung in the laundry room...
I think this means that I won't have wood on the walls until at least April...
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Not much to update, but in the interest of trying to force myself to keep this thread up, I'll provide a small update.
My electrician arrived today to get the compressor and welding plug wired up. After dinner I went out to fire it up, only to discover that the pressure switch was cross threaded onto the tube and barely hanging on by a thread. Clearly a manufacturer's defect. I had noticed it looked a little off when we first unpacked the compressor, but I didn't think anything of it at the time. Sure as ****, it's a surprise that it didn't come flying off as the tank built pressure, as it essentially popped off once I had depressurized the tank and shut everything off.
I've reached out to DeWalt to find out about warranty and closed up shop for the night. Hopefully they will be quick to get someone out to look at it, because I want to get the rest of my air system set up!
My electrician arrived today to get the compressor and welding plug wired up. After dinner I went out to fire it up, only to discover that the pressure switch was cross threaded onto the tube and barely hanging on by a thread. Clearly a manufacturer's defect. I had noticed it looked a little off when we first unpacked the compressor, but I didn't think anything of it at the time. Sure as ****, it's a surprise that it didn't come flying off as the tank built pressure, as it essentially popped off once I had depressurized the tank and shut everything off.
I've reached out to DeWalt to find out about warranty and closed up shop for the night. Hopefully they will be quick to get someone out to look at it, because I want to get the rest of my air system set up!
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I wish! I assure you, I'm very much still in the great white north, and will remain here despite the approximately four-five months of the year where the air hurts your face.
Tonight, my lovely wife came out to give me a hand putting the filter, dryer and regulator on the wall. I had the components all apart because it seemed easier to get all of the sealant on the threads in the individual pieces than as a single unit. Unfortunately, the components for the pressure switch replacement have yet to arrive, so I can't really test for leaks until I get the compressor up and running.
I still intend to rebuild it all with the compressor in a shed out back, but I really want to get the sand blasted up and running by spring so I can get the chairs done for my Aunt.
Tonight, my lovely wife came out to give me a hand putting the filter, dryer and regulator on the wall. I had the components all apart because it seemed easier to get all of the sealant on the threads in the individual pieces than as a single unit. Unfortunately, the components for the pressure switch replacement have yet to arrive, so I can't really test for leaks until I get the compressor up and running.
I still intend to rebuild it all with the compressor in a shed out back, but I really want to get the sand blasted up and running by spring so I can get the chairs done for my Aunt.
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Progress, if you can call it that, was made this weekend. hat I can at least see the light at the end of the moving tunnel now. The shop at Thorncrest (rental house) is a complete mess, but I can confidently say that, save for the biggest item (13' Boston Whaler project boat), all of the "big ****" has made the short trip to our new home. There is lots of smaller bits and pieces and random stuff in both the shed and the garage to still come, but I can confidently say that I believe it will now all fit into the bed of a pickup truck when the time comes. I've determined that one more U-Haul rental is in our immediate future, but I think it should be the last rental for some time.
The new garage, is in utter disarray, and frankly I've come to accept this state of being will largely carry us through the next many months. For now, the Tool Aisle, as it will be temporarily known, is cluttered up, but remains quite functional, even if I had to wheel and stack lumber in there and under the bench temporarily until the lumber racks go up on the walls.
That's all for tonight. I'll try and get some photos uploaded later. Too exhausted right now.
The new garage, is in utter disarray, and frankly I've come to accept this state of being will largely carry us through the next many months. For now, the Tool Aisle, as it will be temporarily known, is cluttered up, but remains quite functional, even if I had to wheel and stack lumber in there and under the bench temporarily until the lumber racks go up on the walls.
That's all for tonight. I'll try and get some photos uploaded later. Too exhausted right now.
I made very little progress today (this week) in the shop, but I should have all of the material that I need to get this pantry done, or at least I really hope so. Like the shop, our house has a severe lack of suitable storage. When we moved in in December, there were no closets (we now have a closet!) and there were a grand total of six drawers in the entire home - four in the kitchen, two in the bathroom - seven I guess, if you count the warming drawer beneath the stove. This just won't do for our needs.
I really enjoycooking eating, so we have amassed a decent amount of cooking apparel. Add to that the food stores to make a decent quality meal and storage becomes really important. As it stands, our four kitchen drawers are stuffed, and while we have plans to renovate the kitchen and address the lack of drawers among other things, that's a longer term project that frankly will result in us having less storage before we have more. To address the inevitable need for storage, we turn to the awkward room off our kitchen:
The Butler's Pantry
There is a space, with a door frame but no door, that measures approximately 9'6" by ~40" immediately off the south-east corner of our kitchen. Useful for about one thing and one thing only - a catchall for things we need semi often but which have not yet found their place - we had struggled to come up with a better solution. My cousin and his wife on their first visit to our new house took one look at that room and inquisitively said "Pantry?"
As I mentioned earlier, there are no closets in the house, other than the one we added to the master. Given that I intend for the most part to enter into the house through the back door rather than the front, I had initially figured that a giant walk-in closet for coats, backpacks (no kids yet, but that's the plan) and a misc drop spot would be a good use of this space. I was however outvoted by my wife's two votes to my one, and I really cannot argue with the logic of a pantry off the kitchen. After all, as logic would have it we need kitchen storage in order to renovate our kitchen to add more storage. So I drew up the following design in Sketchup, and began to play with a couple of online programs to determine cut lists (CutList Optimizer and MaxCut). I was left sufficiently underwhelmed at their material use/waste/logic despite having better success with earlier designs for the shop itself. There's probably a way to do what I want with AI, and I may still toy with that idea for other projects, but I ultimately ended up using the two outputs from CutList Optimizer and MaxCut to come up with my own more logical and significantly simpler cut list.
Next, as you might have figured from the picture in the previous post, I needed to do some better organization. I ended up moving all five sheets of plywood purchased yesterday back to the back wall where my other plywood supply was, and rearranged it into a first-in-first-out orientation with a secondary nod to the planned order of operations (carcass, doors, drawer boxes, drawer bottoms). My improved cut lists called for most of a full sheet of 3/4" and about half a sheet of 1/2" to build out the carcass and the door/drawer fronts - so the baltic birch I had in stock will take center stage in our new pantry as I have one sheet each of 3/4, 1/2 and 1/4" left over from a previous purchase. The new "shop grade birch" purchased more recently will become part of the miter station along the back wall when I get to that project.
The rest of the face frames and trim work will be largely 4/4 poplar, which I began to cut down at least for the base frame today. I only got through the milling process of a single board before we needed to get ready to babysit my nephew for the night, because I got side tracked by the mess, and ended up getting too tired from moving a bunch of plywood around the shop to trust myself around major power tools. After all, I've already had two trips to urgent care this year on account of resistentialism, resulting in rapid involuntary flesh removal to extremities - once by the blade of a spiteful box cutter, and the next after a disagreement with a 2x4 which was decidedly unhappy being screwed by a pocket hole screw that was not designed for exterior use. I will enact my revenge on the offending lumber when I replace the entire gate outright this fall!
I am now mostly ready to begin laying out my cuts on the plywood I'll be using, and begin the process of breaking down the larger sheets with the track saw. I will be able to take this on tomorrow morning, after dropping the nephew off at daycare. If all goes well, I'll have the major carcass pieces cut out and ready to go by dinner tomorrow evening.
Wish me luck!
I really enjoy
The Butler's Pantry
There is a space, with a door frame but no door, that measures approximately 9'6" by ~40" immediately off the south-east corner of our kitchen. Useful for about one thing and one thing only - a catchall for things we need semi often but which have not yet found their place - we had struggled to come up with a better solution. My cousin and his wife on their first visit to our new house took one look at that room and inquisitively said "Pantry?"
As I mentioned earlier, there are no closets in the house, other than the one we added to the master. Given that I intend for the most part to enter into the house through the back door rather than the front, I had initially figured that a giant walk-in closet for coats, backpacks (no kids yet, but that's the plan) and a misc drop spot would be a good use of this space. I was however outvoted by my wife's two votes to my one, and I really cannot argue with the logic of a pantry off the kitchen. After all, as logic would have it we need kitchen storage in order to renovate our kitchen to add more storage. So I drew up the following design in Sketchup, and began to play with a couple of online programs to determine cut lists (CutList Optimizer and MaxCut). I was left sufficiently underwhelmed at their material use/waste/logic despite having better success with earlier designs for the shop itself. There's probably a way to do what I want with AI, and I may still toy with that idea for other projects, but I ultimately ended up using the two outputs from CutList Optimizer and MaxCut to come up with my own more logical and significantly simpler cut list.
Next, as you might have figured from the picture in the previous post, I needed to do some better organization. I ended up moving all five sheets of plywood purchased yesterday back to the back wall where my other plywood supply was, and rearranged it into a first-in-first-out orientation with a secondary nod to the planned order of operations (carcass, doors, drawer boxes, drawer bottoms). My improved cut lists called for most of a full sheet of 3/4" and about half a sheet of 1/2" to build out the carcass and the door/drawer fronts - so the baltic birch I had in stock will take center stage in our new pantry as I have one sheet each of 3/4, 1/2 and 1/4" left over from a previous purchase. The new "shop grade birch" purchased more recently will become part of the miter station along the back wall when I get to that project.
The rest of the face frames and trim work will be largely 4/4 poplar, which I began to cut down at least for the base frame today. I only got through the milling process of a single board before we needed to get ready to babysit my nephew for the night, because I got side tracked by the mess, and ended up getting too tired from moving a bunch of plywood around the shop to trust myself around major power tools. After all, I've already had two trips to urgent care this year on account of resistentialism, resulting in rapid involuntary flesh removal to extremities - once by the blade of a spiteful box cutter, and the next after a disagreement with a 2x4 which was decidedly unhappy being screwed by a pocket hole screw that was not designed for exterior use. I will enact my revenge on the offending lumber when I replace the entire gate outright this fall!
I am now mostly ready to begin laying out my cuts on the plywood I'll be using, and begin the process of breaking down the larger sheets with the track saw. I will be able to take this on tomorrow morning, after dropping the nephew off at daycare. If all goes well, I'll have the major carcass pieces cut out and ready to go by dinner tomorrow evening.
Wish me luck!
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Slept on it, and decided to recheck my measurements in the pantry itself this morning, completely on a whim before I laid out my cut lines on the plywood... Sure as ****, my working area that I had been designing in Sketchup was just a touch too big which would have royally screwed me when it came time to actually move said cabinets in from the shop into their final resting place. This resulted in a complete review of every dimension of every piece (fortunately the blocking that I cut yesterday remain suitable as the toe kick dimension was 1/4" too long. Each of those pieces will be recut as necessary once the toe kick itself gets milled). This lead to a redesign to add more drawers and remove the shelf on the one end, figuring that it would cut down on dusting and provide a slightly more professional look. Our ultimate kitchen plans call for some open shelving next to the refrigerator for cookbooks and knickknacks (hopefully fewer knickknacks) so I won't miss these two shelves.
Thus lead me to the following revised design:
Now I must re-run all my measurements into a spreadsheet to get my cut list figured out...
Thus lead me to the following revised design:
Now I must re-run all my measurements into a spreadsheet to get my cut list figured out...
That's a million dollar question right there. My wife is thinking on it. For what it's worth, I like it the way it is designed now, if for no other reason than simplicity and repeatability for batching out parts.
I adjusted the drawer dimensions slightly since this morning to accommodate potential gridfinity solutions, mostly so that I don't have a "Man I wish I" moment later... All drawers right now have a 4-3/4" height capacity which roughly matches up with our current kitchen drawers. I could see maybe adding one deeper drawer to each side in place of the bottom four, but it really depends on what the Missus wants to put in there.
I'm currently pondering the idea of resawing some of this poplar to make drawer sides out of it rather than plywood, but as I write, I really think that would end up being way too much effort just to call myself a "real woodworker". Nothing anybody other than I would ever really notice anyway. Makes me want to grab a scrap piece and see how accurately I can cut it though.
Happy Holidays Garage Journal!
I'm working in the shop instead of on the shop tonight! Saturday will officially mark one year with the keys to our house, and I managed to make it 362 days without spilling any stains or fluids on the garage floor. The driveway saw a coolant leak earlier this fall, but I managed not to mark my territory in the garage... until tonight.
I thought about painting the floors when we first moved in, but between the winter weather and eagerness to get out of the rental, I said f*ck it.
We've also been hit with quite a bit of winter since November, so this past few days I decided it was time to get room enough to park in the garage, woodworking, house (and shop cabinet) projects be damned... I will probably come to change my mind, but getting into a car that isn't covered in snow is refreshing to say the least.
The tent (pictured to the east of the driveway) is about 80% cleared out, from where it was in the summer when it went up. We had a tarp malfunction this fall (did I say "malfunction"? More like a catastrophic failure!) so it's got some snow in the east side, but it's keeping most everything dry enough.
Shop cabinet construction and continuing to pitch a lot of the auction lumber will tidy this place up, but time's tight lately between family and friends, holidays, work, etc.. All good problems to have, I suppose.
Next up is rear brakes and rotors, which I'm gonna look at on Friday. Admittedly the garage is a bit tight for that job in it's current layout.
I'm working in the shop instead of on the shop tonight! Saturday will officially mark one year with the keys to our house, and I managed to make it 362 days without spilling any stains or fluids on the garage floor. The driveway saw a coolant leak earlier this fall, but I managed not to mark my territory in the garage... until tonight.
I thought about painting the floors when we first moved in, but between the winter weather and eagerness to get out of the rental, I said f*ck it.
We've also been hit with quite a bit of winter since November, so this past few days I decided it was time to get room enough to park in the garage, woodworking, house (and shop cabinet) projects be damned... I will probably come to change my mind, but getting into a car that isn't covered in snow is refreshing to say the least.
The tent (pictured to the east of the driveway) is about 80% cleared out, from where it was in the summer when it went up. We had a tarp malfunction this fall (did I say "malfunction"? More like a catastrophic failure!) so it's got some snow in the east side, but it's keeping most everything dry enough.
Shop cabinet construction and continuing to pitch a lot of the auction lumber will tidy this place up, but time's tight lately between family and friends, holidays, work, etc.. All good problems to have, I suppose.
Next up is rear brakes and rotors, which I'm gonna look at on Friday. Admittedly the garage is a bit tight for that job in it's current layout.
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Happy Holidays, All!
Nothing garage related to report on the Christmas front, as it was mostly other useful gifts around our tree as opposed to tools, equipment or shop supplies. That's false, I did get a small electric screwdriver for working on small stuff, which was kind of neat, but I haven't found a project for it just yet.
The last time I updated, I had cleared enough room out of the garage to get the car in for an oil change and completed said oil change. That all fell apart a few days later when I decided I needed to do something about chargers for my cordless tools, so I broke out the dust collector, jointer and planer for a quick project to mount a couple of chargers on the wall. As luck would have it, I got the spacing wrong between my mounting holes, so it's currently screwed in with a single screw. Nobody's gonna know, unless they find themselves in the back corner of the garage that is.
Onward and upward. We ended up getting a nasty ice storm just after Christmas. Being that I had wood tools out on or about Christmas Eve, the car went back outside and in the hustle of the holiday season, it got left outside, only for a major ice storm to roll in over night, covering every exterior surface in 1/4 to 3/8" of ice. We still had another family get together to do on Saturday, so I ended up leaving the car alone and the garage alone, and forgetting about even going outside for the better part of a day and a half, because what I can't see, won't hurt me, right?
I ended up having to pull the heat gun out to thaw out the car in order to go to my cousin's place for family Christmas on Saturday. It took 20 mins to get the driver's side door open, and another 40 to remove all of the ice from the windshield, rear window and both sides. Upon returning from said cousin's house, I was bound and determined to get the wood tools put away and the car back inside to fully thaw out. Success (though I have been horrible at taking pictures).
This brings us to yesterday, where I took one step forward, then overnight into this morning, two more steps...backward.
I guess we are in for a rare "bomb-cyclone" winter storm that decided to grace us with it's presence around 2:30am. The wind picked up, I think there was some rain, probably some snow. What I know for sure is that it was the end-times for the auxiliary garage (portable car port, with an ill-fitted replacement tarp), and sleep was evading me, listening to the tarp flap in the wind. As morning came, it was clear there was no avoiding taking that tarp off, and at least getting the important-er stuff into the garage (mainly sticks of hardwood lumber of various thickness, width and length). All the stuff that I didn't yet have space for, particularly with the sportwagen inside.
Expletives were muttered, maybe even spoken at times, but I managed to get 95% of the stuff out from under the tent frame, save for a couple of pallets and a donut tire, and two saw horses, all of which have found themselves frozen to the ground. There's also one bucket of firewood which is a lost cause, seeing as it's somewhere along the way lost it's lid and was now full of rain water which had frozen. Oh well, I think I'll have more than enough firewood to dry that bucket out in the spring. Needless to say, the garage is currently uninhabitable, so I have retreated to my office to watch a few more episodes of Inheritance Machining to drool over Brandon's work, shop and tools. Tools which I am itching to buy, but have zero space or skills for at this very moment.
I'll try and snap a few pictures of my hoard of a shop this afternoon, should I work up the strength and courage to go back out there, but for now, I need a coffee.
Nothing garage related to report on the Christmas front, as it was mostly other useful gifts around our tree as opposed to tools, equipment or shop supplies. That's false, I did get a small electric screwdriver for working on small stuff, which was kind of neat, but I haven't found a project for it just yet.
The last time I updated, I had cleared enough room out of the garage to get the car in for an oil change and completed said oil change. That all fell apart a few days later when I decided I needed to do something about chargers for my cordless tools, so I broke out the dust collector, jointer and planer for a quick project to mount a couple of chargers on the wall. As luck would have it, I got the spacing wrong between my mounting holes, so it's currently screwed in with a single screw. Nobody's gonna know, unless they find themselves in the back corner of the garage that is.
Onward and upward. We ended up getting a nasty ice storm just after Christmas. Being that I had wood tools out on or about Christmas Eve, the car went back outside and in the hustle of the holiday season, it got left outside, only for a major ice storm to roll in over night, covering every exterior surface in 1/4 to 3/8" of ice. We still had another family get together to do on Saturday, so I ended up leaving the car alone and the garage alone, and forgetting about even going outside for the better part of a day and a half, because what I can't see, won't hurt me, right?
I ended up having to pull the heat gun out to thaw out the car in order to go to my cousin's place for family Christmas on Saturday. It took 20 mins to get the driver's side door open, and another 40 to remove all of the ice from the windshield, rear window and both sides. Upon returning from said cousin's house, I was bound and determined to get the wood tools put away and the car back inside to fully thaw out. Success (though I have been horrible at taking pictures).
This brings us to yesterday, where I took one step forward, then overnight into this morning, two more steps...backward.
I guess we are in for a rare "bomb-cyclone" winter storm that decided to grace us with it's presence around 2:30am. The wind picked up, I think there was some rain, probably some snow. What I know for sure is that it was the end-times for the auxiliary garage (portable car port, with an ill-fitted replacement tarp), and sleep was evading me, listening to the tarp flap in the wind. As morning came, it was clear there was no avoiding taking that tarp off, and at least getting the important-er stuff into the garage (mainly sticks of hardwood lumber of various thickness, width and length). All the stuff that I didn't yet have space for, particularly with the sportwagen inside.
Expletives were muttered, maybe even spoken at times, but I managed to get 95% of the stuff out from under the tent frame, save for a couple of pallets and a donut tire, and two saw horses, all of which have found themselves frozen to the ground. There's also one bucket of firewood which is a lost cause, seeing as it's somewhere along the way lost it's lid and was now full of rain water which had frozen. Oh well, I think I'll have more than enough firewood to dry that bucket out in the spring. Needless to say, the garage is currently uninhabitable, so I have retreated to my office to watch a few more episodes of Inheritance Machining to drool over Brandon's work, shop and tools. Tools which I am itching to buy, but have zero space or skills for at this very moment.
I'll try and snap a few pictures of my hoard of a shop this afternoon, should I work up the strength and courage to go back out there, but for now, I need a coffee.
It doesn't look like much, but the Resistentialism Cabinet Shop is alive with activity! We are nearing 13 months in the house, which also coincides with 13 months without a dishwasher...
I may have said this here before, maybe not, but I really only hate three things:
1) looking for a job
2) looking for a car; and
3) looking for a place to live.
Now that we managed to get off the Rental Hamster Wheel, maybe I'll loosen up a bit on that last one. Maybe...
I have mentioned our house a bit, but one thing I haven't perhaps gone into a lot of detail is it's status as an unfortunate victim of GEFREP, or "Good-Enough-For-Real-Estate-Photos". For anyone not familiar with GEFREP, it's a few rungs above the Landlord's Special; totally liveable, but only if you learn to accept shortcuts.
Water damage is hidden with clean looking millenial white paint and builder grade cancerous trim to cover up the ugly bits; The cable can be found under the cold air return vent in the living room, but you later realize that someone decided to just cut it at the edge of the driveway; Electrical boxes are installed and wire is run, but the methed-out-racoon "electrician" decided only to run the wire but not actually connect it into the panel...
But you are in just enough over your head that in order to get it on the market you slap up some drywall, install some nice matte black hardware and some smooth white doors and add a nice piece of manufactured stone countertop and you just added $15,000 to the asking price and call it "Bright Newly Renovated Kitchen with Modern Features".
Everything is white and while I don't hate the black on white esthetic, myself, I do think it lacks texture and imagination. Being that this is a starter home though, it's hopefully going to withstand the next ten years or so and give us some resale value. A little bit of sweat equity and elbow grease and we might break even.
So the plan:
The good from ten feet original cabinetry is shoddy, but seeing as neither my wife nor I are too keen on handwashing for the next ten years, we need a dishwasher. And since she's not interested in washing those dishes in the bath tub, I had to come up with a plan that kept our sink in good working order throughout the renovation.
Approximately 78" of cabinets in the 121" run need to be modified or reconfigured entirely in order to economically install a dishwasher, so to do this, my one-million-point-plan is as follows:
1) build and paint new cabinet insert with deeper drawers (optimized for potential future gridfinity organization)
2) remove the bottom of the cabinet under the sink and brace the sink basin against the floor.
3) cut away the remaining cabinet material between the stove and the south (left) side of the sink.
4) build and level a new toe-kick (assuming the old one is likely water damaged)
5) install the drawer unit and shim to fit snugly.
6) remove the rest of that half of the original cabinet run and approximately 1/3 of the other half of the remaining run to the north (right)
7) partition out the dishwasher opening and run electrical into this new opening
8) bridge between the new drawer unit and the new dishwasher hole with a new cabinet bottom.
9) install dishwasher
10) entire 121" run gets new face frame because the old ones are junk
11) one existing cabinet door goes into the basement to be forgotten about, the other two get trimmed down to fit centered under the sink and get reinstalled.
12) begin working on the pantry that was promised to the wife last summer because we now have even less storage in the kitchen than we did before.
Wish me luck. It's time to go inside and warm up.
I may have said this here before, maybe not, but I really only hate three things:
1) looking for a job
2) looking for a car; and
3) looking for a place to live.
Now that we managed to get off the Rental Hamster Wheel, maybe I'll loosen up a bit on that last one. Maybe...
I have mentioned our house a bit, but one thing I haven't perhaps gone into a lot of detail is it's status as an unfortunate victim of GEFREP, or "Good-Enough-For-Real-Estate-Photos". For anyone not familiar with GEFREP, it's a few rungs above the Landlord's Special; totally liveable, but only if you learn to accept shortcuts.
Water damage is hidden with clean looking millenial white paint and builder grade cancerous trim to cover up the ugly bits; The cable can be found under the cold air return vent in the living room, but you later realize that someone decided to just cut it at the edge of the driveway; Electrical boxes are installed and wire is run, but the methed-out-racoon "electrician" decided only to run the wire but not actually connect it into the panel...
But you are in just enough over your head that in order to get it on the market you slap up some drywall, install some nice matte black hardware and some smooth white doors and add a nice piece of manufactured stone countertop and you just added $15,000 to the asking price and call it "Bright Newly Renovated Kitchen with Modern Features".
Everything is white and while I don't hate the black on white esthetic, myself, I do think it lacks texture and imagination. Being that this is a starter home though, it's hopefully going to withstand the next ten years or so and give us some resale value. A little bit of sweat equity and elbow grease and we might break even.
So the plan:
The good from ten feet original cabinetry is shoddy, but seeing as neither my wife nor I are too keen on handwashing for the next ten years, we need a dishwasher. And since she's not interested in washing those dishes in the bath tub, I had to come up with a plan that kept our sink in good working order throughout the renovation.
Approximately 78" of cabinets in the 121" run need to be modified or reconfigured entirely in order to economically install a dishwasher, so to do this, my one-million-point-plan is as follows:
1) build and paint new cabinet insert with deeper drawers (optimized for potential future gridfinity organization)
2) remove the bottom of the cabinet under the sink and brace the sink basin against the floor.
3) cut away the remaining cabinet material between the stove and the south (left) side of the sink.
4) build and level a new toe-kick (assuming the old one is likely water damaged)
5) install the drawer unit and shim to fit snugly.
6) remove the rest of that half of the original cabinet run and approximately 1/3 of the other half of the remaining run to the north (right)
7) partition out the dishwasher opening and run electrical into this new opening
8) bridge between the new drawer unit and the new dishwasher hole with a new cabinet bottom.
9) install dishwasher
10) entire 121" run gets new face frame because the old ones are junk
11) one existing cabinet door goes into the basement to be forgotten about, the other two get trimmed down to fit centered under the sink and get reinstalled.
12) begin working on the pantry that was promised to the wife last summer because we now have even less storage in the kitchen than we did before.
Wish me luck. It's time to go inside and warm up.
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Assembled the carcass this morning and came inside for lunch. We got the remaining dishes done and decided it was time to start demo.
I shortened the base from my drill press/Band saw cart that I built some time ago to stiffen up that unit when I had it in place at the old house, and cut it to 35" to support the stove end of the counter top, then somewhat loosely clamped a 2x4 to the counter top from above because I'm nervous about cracking the counter arounthe sink opening. Under the sink will now get a temporary support structure once I've fully assessed the flooring situation under there and determined that there's no need to remove/replace any of the subfloor. So far it doesn't stink and other than the first layer or so which had curled it seems good and dry, so I'm tempted to just vacuum it out and start building my cabinet bases. I'll fit them around the supports under the sink and then remove that once we're good and solid with cabinets where we need them.
I shortened the base from my drill press/Band saw cart that I built some time ago to stiffen up that unit when I had it in place at the old house, and cut it to 35" to support the stove end of the counter top, then somewhat loosely clamped a 2x4 to the counter top from above because I'm nervous about cracking the counter arounthe sink opening. Under the sink will now get a temporary support structure once I've fully assessed the flooring situation under there and determined that there's no need to remove/replace any of the subfloor. So far it doesn't stink and other than the first layer or so which had curled it seems good and dry, so I'm tempted to just vacuum it out and start building my cabinet bases. I'll fit them around the supports under the sink and then remove that once we're good and solid with cabinets where we need them.
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Added a new machine to the shop this weekend. 320lbs of cast iron shoehorned into the back of the GSW was no match for my brute force and ignorance, for against my better judgement and in a snowstorm no less I wrestled the green ******* out of the back of the wagon and into the shop.
A friend of my Dad's has had this shaper for a couple of years and we'd talked about it a bit back when we were in the old place with the rented 3 car garage, but I didn't really have a need for it at the time. With the kitchen project underway it felt like a good idea to revisit the conversation as I've got a whack of doors to build for both the kitchen and the pantry before all is said and done. The machine with a mobile base, fence/dust shroud, a few additional spindle and collet parts for running router bits and three big cutters was all mine for $500.
My Dad is going to pop by this week to help rough out the electric for the dishwasher as well as see about getting the shaper up and running, so tonight's job is to try and get more of the shop organized such that we can get the shaper in a useable spot and ensure we have enough wire to power it.
I didn't make a ton of progress on the kitchen on account of my Mom's birthday, but that's a worthy distraction!
More this week as we get to actual construction of cabinet boxes (if all goes well)!
A friend of my Dad's has had this shaper for a couple of years and we'd talked about it a bit back when we were in the old place with the rented 3 car garage, but I didn't really have a need for it at the time. With the kitchen project underway it felt like a good idea to revisit the conversation as I've got a whack of doors to build for both the kitchen and the pantry before all is said and done. The machine with a mobile base, fence/dust shroud, a few additional spindle and collet parts for running router bits and three big cutters was all mine for $500.
My Dad is going to pop by this week to help rough out the electric for the dishwasher as well as see about getting the shaper up and running, so tonight's job is to try and get more of the shop organized such that we can get the shaper in a useable spot and ensure we have enough wire to power it.
I didn't make a ton of progress on the kitchen on account of my Mom's birthday, but that's a worthy distraction!
More this week as we get to actual construction of cabinet boxes (if all goes well)!
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Spent some time degreasing and cleaning up the top of the shaper tonight, and I'm pleasantly surprised with how well it's come out! It's by no means perfect, but none of my machines are. My Dad came over on Wednesday to help with some household electrical and we swapped the plug and tested out the motor on the shaper after we were done. I haven't mounted a cutter yet, but I know it purrs like a kitten.
I'll likely continue working on getting the dust and grime out of the cabinet tonight then go out on the hunt for cutters tomorrow. We are still considering which type of doors we want for the kitchen cabinets, but we know it's going to be a variation of a more traditional shaker style, but ideally with a bit of a bevel/chamfer to mitigate dust settling in the 90° corners between the face frame and the panel. So far, it's looking like the cutter is going to be just under $700. I haven't pulled the trigger yet because that's a hefty pill to swallow. I'm building cabinets for both the house and the shop because I'm too cheap to buy cabinets or pay someone to make something that I know I can make myself if I put my mind to it. They'll be better quality than the mdf or chipboard **** you can buy from the box stores, but I have my doubts that they'll be much cheaper by comparison after factoring in the price of wood stock, hardware and tooling... I'm sure the satisfaction of a quality finished product will make me feel better... Or at least I hope!
I'll likely continue working on getting the dust and grime out of the cabinet tonight then go out on the hunt for cutters tomorrow. We are still considering which type of doors we want for the kitchen cabinets, but we know it's going to be a variation of a more traditional shaker style, but ideally with a bit of a bevel/chamfer to mitigate dust settling in the 90° corners between the face frame and the panel. So far, it's looking like the cutter is going to be just under $700. I haven't pulled the trigger yet because that's a hefty pill to swallow. I'm building cabinets for both the house and the shop because I'm too cheap to buy cabinets or pay someone to make something that I know I can make myself if I put my mind to it. They'll be better quality than the mdf or chipboard **** you can buy from the box stores, but I have my doubts that they'll be much cheaper by comparison after factoring in the price of wood stock, hardware and tooling... I'm sure the satisfaction of a quality finished product will make me feel better... Or at least I hope!
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Post-coffee thoughts:
The flats on the 3/4" spindle mounted in the shaper as well as the two nuts that fit it seem to be an odd mix of imperial and metric in size with no particular wrench fitting with an acceptable amount of tolerance (though I have not measured the tolerances officially). The shaper itself came with one of those stamped sheet steel multi-fit wrenches with maybe a half dozen different sizes, but like so many other wrenches of the style, it's warped and I just hate how it feels in hand. In my dissatisfaction, I went in search of the proper fitting wrenches and became further dissatisfied by the results: the spindle itself fits a 12mm open end pretty much bang on, but the right-hand nut and left-hand threaded jam nut fit a 1-1/16" and 23mm socket respectively, albeit with an incredible amount of slop. I don't have either size in a wrench at the moment, so I have been using the plier-wrench in the interim.
Add to this, my latest obsession, (previously mentioned in my December 29th post) Inheritance Machining, reigniting my desire to have a lathe (I have not identified a suitable location for a mill or surface grinder in the shop just yet, but I assure you that the wheels are turning in my mind), and I am now deeply unsatisfied with the fit and finish of my wrenches and the nuts on this shaper and am bound and determined to buy a lathe (says the guy who trips over all of the other major tools and stuff that came over here approximately one year ago and still has not found a home).
Could I go out and buy a new set of wrenches? Sure I could. Would it make a difference? Probably not.
I haven't tried swapping out the spindles for the 1/2" or the collets for router bits, mainly because I'm going to use the 3/4" spindle most often, and the cutter head that I'll use for the cabinetry in the house should be here Thursday.
For now I will continue to dream about a lathe while I finish off kitchen parts and weather the winter. I'm hoping, though not necessarily optimistic, that I'll have the funds to build the small compressor/dust collector shed out back this spring. This would free up some space to put a lathe in the shop to make up a new set of nuts for the spindles on the shaper in order to meet a tighter tolerances.
Power Feed Installation:
Yesterday I grabbed an approximately 1/4hp power feeder to mount on the shaper as both a productivity improver for the approximately one-million-give-or-take-999,500 rails and stiles which need to be manufactured for various home and shop cabinetry. I figured that my fingers are worth the extra money up front.
To install, I had to drill and tap four holes in the cast iron top. I actually looked at the manual and skimmed a few pages before setting off on the installation and then proceeded to spend the next hour or so meticulously aligning the casting before drilling and tapping the top. As I drilled out the four holes, sure as **** I did end up coming in contact with the top edge of the cabinet beneath the top, ever so slightly on the third hole... Three outta four ain't bad, I guess. I shimmed that bolt with a couple of washers that I filed down so as to not bend or scratch against the fresh painted casting.
The next hour was spent installing and manipulating the power feeder, and again dreaming about a lathe. The manual - remember the manual? I read (parts of) it - shows the casting mounted to the rear right corner of the shaper, more or less exactly where I mounted it to my shaper. The manual also shows the feeder's ability to extend the middle wheel to approximately the middle of the table (plot twist, this is not possible in reality). Back to dreaming about a lathe; a lathe would allow me to turn a new, longer bar, to actually reach the middle and left hand side of the table, improving the reach and/or an extended tapered fitting allowing the motor to swing under the x- (x/y?)-axis ever so slightly to better align with the fence/spindle, improving the functionality of the power feed greatly.
Since this shaper is capable of being run in either CW or CCW, if I want to power feed in both directions, I will need to pucker up my ******** once more and drill/tap a second mounting location to the left rear corner. I'm not going to go about doing that until I've determined that it's absolutely unavoidable, because otherwise this table top is pretty well taken care of, save for the small battle scar I put in the center hole casting by having it ever so slightly skewed from the bit mounted on the spindle.
While eating my lunch, the 5/16-18 star knobs I ordered yesterday arrived to replace two bolts that are used for the hold-downs. In hindsight with the power feed, those bolts are probably obsolete, which is good because the casting is tapped for 3/8-16 not 5/16-18 and I'm a dummy. They were not prohibitively expensive so they'll likely just end up in my collection of odds and ends before finding a use in some project or another.
Before I can start running cabinet parts through the shaper, I will mill up a new fence board. I like the three-piece fence idea with the sacrificial dove-tailed inserts, but alas I don't have the time to screw around and make one of those right now. Our kitchen has been a construction zone for two full weeks now and while we have electrical roughed in, I am reminded that we still don't have a dishwasher installed (or ordered).
The flats on the 3/4" spindle mounted in the shaper as well as the two nuts that fit it seem to be an odd mix of imperial and metric in size with no particular wrench fitting with an acceptable amount of tolerance (though I have not measured the tolerances officially). The shaper itself came with one of those stamped sheet steel multi-fit wrenches with maybe a half dozen different sizes, but like so many other wrenches of the style, it's warped and I just hate how it feels in hand. In my dissatisfaction, I went in search of the proper fitting wrenches and became further dissatisfied by the results: the spindle itself fits a 12mm open end pretty much bang on, but the right-hand nut and left-hand threaded jam nut fit a 1-1/16" and 23mm socket respectively, albeit with an incredible amount of slop. I don't have either size in a wrench at the moment, so I have been using the plier-wrench in the interim.
Add to this, my latest obsession, (previously mentioned in my December 29th post) Inheritance Machining, reigniting my desire to have a lathe (I have not identified a suitable location for a mill or surface grinder in the shop just yet, but I assure you that the wheels are turning in my mind), and I am now deeply unsatisfied with the fit and finish of my wrenches and the nuts on this shaper and am bound and determined to buy a lathe (says the guy who trips over all of the other major tools and stuff that came over here approximately one year ago and still has not found a home).
Could I go out and buy a new set of wrenches? Sure I could. Would it make a difference? Probably not.
I haven't tried swapping out the spindles for the 1/2" or the collets for router bits, mainly because I'm going to use the 3/4" spindle most often, and the cutter head that I'll use for the cabinetry in the house should be here Thursday.
For now I will continue to dream about a lathe while I finish off kitchen parts and weather the winter. I'm hoping, though not necessarily optimistic, that I'll have the funds to build the small compressor/dust collector shed out back this spring. This would free up some space to put a lathe in the shop to make up a new set of nuts for the spindles on the shaper in order to meet a tighter tolerances.
Power Feed Installation:
Yesterday I grabbed an approximately 1/4hp power feeder to mount on the shaper as both a productivity improver for the approximately one-million-give-or-take-999,500 rails and stiles which need to be manufactured for various home and shop cabinetry. I figured that my fingers are worth the extra money up front.
To install, I had to drill and tap four holes in the cast iron top. I actually looked at the manual and skimmed a few pages before setting off on the installation and then proceeded to spend the next hour or so meticulously aligning the casting before drilling and tapping the top. As I drilled out the four holes, sure as **** I did end up coming in contact with the top edge of the cabinet beneath the top, ever so slightly on the third hole... Three outta four ain't bad, I guess. I shimmed that bolt with a couple of washers that I filed down so as to not bend or scratch against the fresh painted casting.
The next hour was spent installing and manipulating the power feeder, and again dreaming about a lathe. The manual - remember the manual? I read (parts of) it - shows the casting mounted to the rear right corner of the shaper, more or less exactly where I mounted it to my shaper. The manual also shows the feeder's ability to extend the middle wheel to approximately the middle of the table (plot twist, this is not possible in reality). Back to dreaming about a lathe; a lathe would allow me to turn a new, longer bar, to actually reach the middle and left hand side of the table, improving the reach and/or an extended tapered fitting allowing the motor to swing under the x- (x/y?)-axis ever so slightly to better align with the fence/spindle, improving the functionality of the power feed greatly.
Since this shaper is capable of being run in either CW or CCW, if I want to power feed in both directions, I will need to pucker up my ******** once more and drill/tap a second mounting location to the left rear corner. I'm not going to go about doing that until I've determined that it's absolutely unavoidable, because otherwise this table top is pretty well taken care of, save for the small battle scar I put in the center hole casting by having it ever so slightly skewed from the bit mounted on the spindle.
While eating my lunch, the 5/16-18 star knobs I ordered yesterday arrived to replace two bolts that are used for the hold-downs. In hindsight with the power feed, those bolts are probably obsolete, which is good because the casting is tapped for 3/8-16 not 5/16-18 and I'm a dummy. They were not prohibitively expensive so they'll likely just end up in my collection of odds and ends before finding a use in some project or another.
Before I can start running cabinet parts through the shaper, I will mill up a new fence board. I like the three-piece fence idea with the sacrificial dove-tailed inserts, but alas I don't have the time to screw around and make one of those right now. Our kitchen has been a construction zone for two full weeks now and while we have electrical roughed in, I am reminded that we still don't have a dishwasher installed (or ordered).
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Getting ahead of myself, but when the right piece of equipment comes along, you jump on it. Still needs some clean-up, a new switch for the power, and it seems that the dust shroud (which was cracked already) may have blown off on the drive home, but this Performax 22/44 should make finish work ahead of paint a breeze. Interestingly enough this beast of a machine weighs in about 10' less than the shaper did.
A few of our cupboard doors are going to be at about the max for this machine (I think one specifically for the pantry is just a tad over the 22" single pass max, but it should knock out a whole or of hand sanding for the 12 drawers and 17ish doors that need to be manufactured for the kitchen and pantry builds (remember the pantry? The one I was supposed to finish back in the summer?)
It needs a good bit of elbow grease, like the shaper before it, and it takes up a bit more room than I had initially planned, but I couldn't beat it size wise for doing all or most of the cabinet parts without having to do flip passes.
My Dad's already got himself in line behind me to use it for countertops for the boat, as he's currently building all new interior for the trawler.
Anyone have a good source for reasonably priced plexiglass? I wouldn't mind being able to see the drum so I know when to give it a touch-up with the eraser!
A few of our cupboard doors are going to be at about the max for this machine (I think one specifically for the pantry is just a tad over the 22" single pass max, but it should knock out a whole or of hand sanding for the 12 drawers and 17ish doors that need to be manufactured for the kitchen and pantry builds (remember the pantry? The one I was supposed to finish back in the summer?)
It needs a good bit of elbow grease, like the shaper before it, and it takes up a bit more room than I had initially planned, but I couldn't beat it size wise for doing all or most of the cabinet parts without having to do flip passes.
My Dad's already got himself in line behind me to use it for countertops for the boat, as he's currently building all new interior for the trawler.
Anyone have a good source for reasonably priced plexiglass? I wouldn't mind being able to see the drum so I know when to give it a touch-up with the eraser!
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Not a garage update, so much as it is a Resistentialism update. Today, my thread lived up to it's name, while the threads on four lag screws proving to be made out of soft cheese rather than steel, reminded me why this thread got it's name in the first place:
1/4" pilot hole into brown PT. I stopped shy of the full 2" depth, so as to avoid blowing through the good side of the gate. Nice clean holes, drill bit was a little tough going through, but I chocked that up to drilling over my head and not having good force behind it.
But, low and behold:
All four bolts looked like this coming out.
I guess I'm going out to get carriage bolts and try again from the other side...
1/4" pilot hole into brown PT. I stopped shy of the full 2" depth, so as to avoid blowing through the good side of the gate. Nice clean holes, drill bit was a little tough going through, but I chocked that up to drilling over my head and not having good force behind it.
But, low and behold:
All four bolts looked like this coming out.
I guess I'm going out to get carriage bolts and try again from the other side...
I'm a dummy. On further inspection, the shoulder between the thread and where it widens before the head bottomed out in the hinge holes, as they were just a touch undersized. I'll need to bore out the hinges a touch, but I still will likely need carriage bolts as the holes are substantially mangled inside now so they will require through bolting.Not a garage update, so much as it is a Resistentialism update. Today, my thread lived up to it's name, while the threads on four lag screws proving to be made out of soft cheese rather than steel, reminded me why this thread got it's name in the first place:
1/4" pilot hole into brown PT. I stopped shy of the full 2" depth, so as to avoid blowing through the good side of the gate. Nice clean holes, drill bit was a little tough going through, but I chocked that up to drilling over my head and not having good force behind it.
But, low and behold:
All four bolts looked like this coming out.
I guess I'm going out to get carriage bolts and try again from the other side...
Stupidity: 1
Corey: 0
Let's all try to forget that I posted this to the internet, right? Right.
New temporary tenant in the garage taking up space. Dishwasher arrived, but naturally I'm nowhere near ready to do the install yet so I'm the garage it goes until the weekend. Gotta get myself in gear to get some drawers finished (started) so I can do the removal of the existing drawers, creating the hole where the dishwasher will ultimately live.
For tonight, I need to get my temporary work bench cleared off to break down plywood on.
For tonight, I need to get my temporary work bench cleared off to break down plywood on.
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I've officially run out of steam, and my tools aren't even put away yet. Since I sat down to write this the first time, I was able to muster up the energy to at least get them back into the garage, albeit not away away.
10ish 11-1/2 hour day put in today to build the 'shed-in-a-box-from-hell-or-was-it-Walmart?' 
In all honesty, it really went together -for the most part- easier than I had expected, even if it's not finished entirely yet. Definitely a two person job, so having my Dad here for the day again after having him here last Sunday for a plumbing assist, was well appreciated.
I started my day out in the back yard around 7:30ish to spread out some soil and give us a reasonably level surface to build on. It took about four wheel barrow loads to raise the south-west corner of the property up a tad (back right corner of the shed). That took me about an hour, because I'm a soft-in-the-middle-keyboard-jockey. My 20 year old self would shake his head at my lack of endurance.
I really didn't get many photos onward of the actual work, due to the fact that Dad had to be back home for dinner time, but safe to say we really knocked out well more than I expected we'd get done. When he arrived, we nailed together a frame out of 2X6 PT, and then added 2x4 PT inside to give us something to set our floor onto. Now had I not been in such a hurry to get this done (ignorantly hoping that we'd have time after the shed to install the driveway gate) I'd have added some adhesive between the 2x4 and 2x6 frames, before installing the floor boards. Time will tell, but I nailed them good with the framing nailer so they (hopefully) won't sag over time. It's a shed, so I really don't foresee any live loads other than my wife doing some occasional potting in there. So as not to expose any of the end grain, I took care to make sure each of my cut ends butted up against the face of the board, so no cut edges are directly exposed to the elements, only the ones that received the brown treatment. If I can get the shed buttoned up tomorrow, I'd like to start turfing all of the garden stuff and other misc. items into it so I can spend my evenings in a slightly less cluttered garage.
Still to do:
- Doors. I attempted to get them installed before the end of the day, but being tired I ended up making a mistake so I gave up rather than breaking something...
- I need to level the ground under the awning/BBQ area, as there is still quite a bit of fall to the east of the lot... I'll be adding a similar frame to what's around the shed foundation, and fill it with gravel. I will likely need to raise the legs up about 6-7", but I'll only go a 2x4 tall or so with gravel to give myself some more headroom. It's a bit tight right now inside for my 5'8" frame.
- Interior will get some additional framing just so we can hang garden tools and the likes
- Wife's potting bench needs to be built.
- Driveway gate needs to be installed.
- Grade the rest of the back yard and order sod.
In the kitchen - remember the kitchen(?) - we did get a dishwasher installed last week! I posted over in one of the woodworking threads about my bandsaw motor going kaput, so I'm feeling a little bit stalled on drawers. Warranty is covering a new motor, I'm just waiting for the shipping details. While I know I could just pull out the planer and run the remaining boards through it and keep progress moving, given that the bandsaw is taking anywhere from 1/4 to 3/8" off, I'd be the better part of 6 passes per board before being ready to send them all through the drum sander, and I would need to address the snipe that the planer is producing. I just don't want the hassle and I have other projects to keep me occupied while I wait for the motor.
While I like my little planer just fine, I do still find it quite loud and far more disruptive to the neighbourhood (at least in my opinion) than the bandsaw. Further more, if I spend too much time at the planer, then I have a harder time justifying both the space committment and the financial investment in the (significantly quieter) drum sander. Gotta make sure the sander get's some miles on it to keep the wife happy, you know!
I will be looking to invest in a much larger planer in the distant future. I came close to dropping some coin on a larger 220v jointer this past week, but my little benchtop unit has really proven more than capable so far through this project... I haven't got to doing face frames yet of course, so there's still time to get annoyed at the little jointer that could, but I'm hopeful that I can use it throughout the project.
I feel like I'm rambling on, and not doing this thread enough justice through the lack of pictures, so I'll end my post here.
Cheers, all!
In all honesty, it really went together -for the most part- easier than I had expected, even if it's not finished entirely yet. Definitely a two person job, so having my Dad here for the day again after having him here last Sunday for a plumbing assist, was well appreciated.
I started my day out in the back yard around 7:30ish to spread out some soil and give us a reasonably level surface to build on. It took about four wheel barrow loads to raise the south-west corner of the property up a tad (back right corner of the shed). That took me about an hour, because I'm a soft-in-the-middle-keyboard-jockey. My 20 year old self would shake his head at my lack of endurance.
I really didn't get many photos onward of the actual work, due to the fact that Dad had to be back home for dinner time, but safe to say we really knocked out well more than I expected we'd get done. When he arrived, we nailed together a frame out of 2X6 PT, and then added 2x4 PT inside to give us something to set our floor onto. Now had I not been in such a hurry to get this done (ignorantly hoping that we'd have time after the shed to install the driveway gate) I'd have added some adhesive between the 2x4 and 2x6 frames, before installing the floor boards. Time will tell, but I nailed them good with the framing nailer so they (hopefully) won't sag over time. It's a shed, so I really don't foresee any live loads other than my wife doing some occasional potting in there. So as not to expose any of the end grain, I took care to make sure each of my cut ends butted up against the face of the board, so no cut edges are directly exposed to the elements, only the ones that received the brown treatment. If I can get the shed buttoned up tomorrow, I'd like to start turfing all of the garden stuff and other misc. items into it so I can spend my evenings in a slightly less cluttered garage.
Still to do:
- Doors. I attempted to get them installed before the end of the day, but being tired I ended up making a mistake so I gave up rather than breaking something...
- I need to level the ground under the awning/BBQ area, as there is still quite a bit of fall to the east of the lot... I'll be adding a similar frame to what's around the shed foundation, and fill it with gravel. I will likely need to raise the legs up about 6-7", but I'll only go a 2x4 tall or so with gravel to give myself some more headroom. It's a bit tight right now inside for my 5'8" frame.
- Interior will get some additional framing just so we can hang garden tools and the likes
- Wife's potting bench needs to be built.
- Driveway gate needs to be installed.
- Grade the rest of the back yard and order sod.
In the kitchen - remember the kitchen(?) - we did get a dishwasher installed last week! I posted over in one of the woodworking threads about my bandsaw motor going kaput, so I'm feeling a little bit stalled on drawers. Warranty is covering a new motor, I'm just waiting for the shipping details. While I know I could just pull out the planer and run the remaining boards through it and keep progress moving, given that the bandsaw is taking anywhere from 1/4 to 3/8" off, I'd be the better part of 6 passes per board before being ready to send them all through the drum sander, and I would need to address the snipe that the planer is producing. I just don't want the hassle and I have other projects to keep me occupied while I wait for the motor.
While I like my little planer just fine, I do still find it quite loud and far more disruptive to the neighbourhood (at least in my opinion) than the bandsaw. Further more, if I spend too much time at the planer, then I have a harder time justifying both the space committment and the financial investment in the (significantly quieter) drum sander. Gotta make sure the sander get's some miles on it to keep the wife happy, you know!
I will be looking to invest in a much larger planer in the distant future. I came close to dropping some coin on a larger 220v jointer this past week, but my little benchtop unit has really proven more than capable so far through this project... I haven't got to doing face frames yet of course, so there's still time to get annoyed at the little jointer that could, but I'm hopeful that I can use it throughout the project.
I feel like I'm rambling on, and not doing this thread enough justice through the lack of pictures, so I'll end my post here.
Cheers, all!
