Sorry for being a bit sparse on the updates of the shed. I've been really busy with odd jobs here and there, but the upside to this is that I have now got a bit more money to spend on getting set up to do excellent things. My girlfriend and I have decided to sign up for another 12 months in this house so it's time to get things properly set up. The good lady is now back at university learning to be a law talking kind of gal. This in itself means I have to do a lot more work from home as now only one of us is working full time.
Since starting this thread, I've been checking out the dozens of amazing workshops and garages that others on GJ have been sharing with us all. It's unbelievable to me how much of an effect that the different ways people do the same tasks has had on me. There are dozens of brilliant garages on here that I've spent hours following threads and making notes from.
After having my mind blown repeatedly by garages that are smaller than mine with seemingly more space, I've realised that I badly need to remove the objects that are in storage from the workspace. There are eskys (fishing coolers), fishing rods, tents, spare parts, wheels, timber, steel, aluminium, bolts, nuts and every other damn thing under the sun taking up considerably more space than my welding equipment and my mechanical tools.
The elephant in the room here is the car I am restoring.
My brother has suggested that maybe instead of redesigning the whole place to condense clutter and create more space, that I should probably just finish the car and get it out of the way. In a way, he's right. In fact, in almost every way he's right, except I can't stop working on other jobs and making money to spend at least 1000 hours on the Falcon, and even when it is finished, it will still need a home out of the weather.
I need a storeroom.
In Melbourne there is a ten square metre (108sq') limit on any additional structures unless council approval is sought. I have purchased a 4.5m x 2.2m (15'x7.5') zincalum shed, and I'm going to build it across the backyard. That will sort out the storage issues that I'm having and free up a considerable amount of space in the shed, and tidy up the yard, which will make my girlfriend very happy too.
The next part of the problem is the yard itself. It slopes backwards and when it rains it gets very wet right where I am planning on putting the shed, however it is well drained and runs off into the laneway behind the house.
Where does that leave me? Well, I scored about 230 metres (600'?) of 75x75x5 (3"x3"x7/32"square tube for next to nothing. I'm going to use this to build a floor frame for the 15'x7.5' shed and elevate it on 65x65x6 steel posts attached to concrete blocks that I will dig deep enough that I can bury when we move out. My plan is to make it like mechano so I can dismantle it and take it with me when we move out. Once I get all the gear out of the workshop and into storage, using more of the steel, I'm planning to build two new 8ft x 2 ft steevo style benches on casters, and some smaller shelves for consumables and other frequently used stuff.
I made a Google SketchUp drawing of what I want to do with the shed. I don't yet own the Colchester Master, nor the Bridgeport that is in the drawing, but the benches are going to be put together using the welder in the corner, and the machinery will be purchased over the next three months.
The storage shed arrives between Wednesday 7 and Friday 9 August, so I've got a bit of a task to build and set the frame before the panels get here, but I might just have some photos of progress for a change.
Any advice regarding the construction of dinky little toy sheds is welcomed, as is any input to the drawing that I just posted. I am TERRIBLE at using Sketchup, but we all have to start somewhere I suppose.
Cheers for reading,
Danny
