Winter Vignette: Part 4.5

In my last post I wrote:

“This may be the only blog post on the internet typed into a NEO2 perched on a homemade workbench while riding out a blizzard by the warmth of a 70 year old kitchen stove. Is that not making the best of things?”

Pics or it didn’t happen right? Here goes:

Ah…. what a cozy spot!

Time for a digression about workshops.


Workshop:

Every man needs one. Not every man gets one.

If you don’t have a shop, you’re welcome to share my virtual shop.

I’m thankful for what I’ve got but it’s not perfect. Also it’s a process more than a destination. Wind the clock back a few years and my shop was a wreck (as it has been forever). Year after year, the ceiling (made of unsuitable materials) was perpetually collapsing under it’s own weight. Dusty, rotten, scrap “bungalow paneling” was falling in bits and pieces on my tools and machines and projects. Nor was the insulation doing any good. It was an oven whenever it wasn’t iced up. Also, the previous owner was a complete loon about wires so Romex was spread about like spaghetti.

I could ignore it all except the crap falling out of the rafters onto my head! (I wrote a time travel blog post about the idiot who inflicted bad workmanship on the future landowner… me.) Try building decent stuff when shit’s falling on your head… it’s hard.

A few years ago I “took action”. I saved up beforehand and then cried havoc and released buckets of labor and money on a frontal assault. I started with a “fresh” roof and went from there. I was trying to “rehab” it into something more usable. It was a noble cause. It was meant well. It was a fucking disaster.

I faceplanted hard!

I wound up with an overbudget half-finished muddle that was so painfully disappointing I didn’t even blog about it. I made progress but never saw a hint of a finish line.

In retrospect, fixing the mess wasn’t wise. It would have been only 25% more expensive (and amazingly easier!) to clear some different area, pour a slab, and erect a 2 stall “kit” garage. The end result would be larger, simpler, and vastly superior to what I’ve accomplished so far. Simple shit like insulating a wall is just such a timesink within a derelict mess. Rather than just putting up fresh insulation between fresh studs I burned zillions of man hours ripping out mice riddled, soaked, moldy, rotten, crap only to turn around and work my ass off re-insulating off kilter half crooked walls. Years into the battle and I’m not even done yet!

As, for building new, I have plenty of land and that significantly changes the equation. Plus it’s essential to live in free America; zoning out here is not the Gestapo of cities. I can slap up a garage faster than someone in Portland can make a doghouse.

I sincerely regret my underestimation of the hassle involved in “retrofit” over “build from scratch”. If I had to do it all over again I’d just gut the mess; kill the power, rip out the shitty electrical, deep six the defunct garage doors, and wade in there with a wrecking bar and a bad attitude. I could have torn out everything to the studs and hauled away the mess in a few month’s “spare time”. Then I’d stick up a few simple lights and call the empty shell a “machine shed”. The important part is I could have salvaged something useful and declared victory yet escaped without burning my budget. But… nobody is without error. I did my best.

Also, even as it has been a derelict mess I’ve used the shop extensively away. (You have to do what you can with what you’ve got.)

For a year or so and especially this winter (at least in fleeting moments when it was warm enough) I’ve been nibbling away at the edges. Finally, the shop is turning out somewhat pleasant. Even the shit that sucks is becoming “character” instead of “pain in the ass”. It’s “quaint” if you’ve got enough bourbon in ya.

In January (whenever I had enough heat) I painted the new (!) ceiling (it’s just plywood). This took forever as I gained ground incrementally in trench warfare against entropy; a square foot at a time. I put up more lights (one can never have too many cheap shop lights).

With time I slowly gained ground in the life sized Tetrus game of moving too much shit around a too small space. Now it’s (mostly) “cleaned up” (within the scale of “shop clean”). Though, a dead ATV with snowplow in the middle of it all wasn’t exactly my plan. (You’d be amazed how much space you lose when there’s a dead vehicle in your workspace.)

Now that the sawdust system is about 80% done it’s already keeping it from becoming a mess again. The stove and other heat systems work (within reason). There’s a shelf for my radio and podcast playing kindle. The ridiculously over-complex electrical system is much better sorted out. Etc.

What a joy it is to have a decent workspace! Even if cabin fever doldrums turn it mostly into a place to brew coffee and wait for spring… it’s good to have a stool to sit and bench in front of it. It’s becoming a place to think.

Given the huge snowpack, the floor will probably flood in a month. It’s just the nature of the local drainage. It floods most springs and that’s the way of it. (Yes, I’ve done trench work and stuff… sometimes there’s a stupid place to put a building and sometimes the person who owned your land before you bought it put a building in a stupid place. You play the hand you’re dealt, not the one you want.)

Hopefully, I’ll get everything off the floor before it gets too bad. (I have time… the world is ice right now.) It’s usually only 1-4″ of meltwater for a week or two. I’ve already got my machines on wheels (though the new(!) wheel set on the bandsaw toasted out in less than a year… the cracked cement floor eats small wheels). With luck I’ll police my materials (plywood and boards) and get ’em suspended in time. (Lord help me, there’s always something in a cardboard box on the floor and in June I always find it!) Obviously my wood stove and such won’t care if it’s flooded yet again.

So there you have it. An ad hok report of what Dr. Mingo called my “safe space”. (A term I can’t help but appreciate in this context.)

I’m going back out into the maelstrom to shove more damn snow. Please talk amongst yourselves in the meantime.

A.C.

About AdaptiveCurmudgeon

Adaptive Curmudgeon is handsome, brave, and wise.
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5 Responses to Winter Vignette: Part 4.5

  1. Bill Kline says:

    One of the problems I have with metal sheds/outbuildings is the smell.

    Wooden buildings get that old-wood smell in them (Of course, admittedly, your’s may not if it floods every spring – it may get an entirely different odor altogether). I love the smell of an old building, particularly an old workshop, where the scents of oil, sawdust, etc combine.

    The metal building kind of tends to stay sterile-smelling in my opinion.

    • AdaptiveCurmudgeon says:

      Mine tends to smell of crappy 1970’s building materials. I’m convinced that every “space aged” flim flam material that went on sale was immediately shipped to the then owner of my property and he nailed that shit up with joy. Scruffy paneling, Masonite, stuff that looks like cardboard, etc… the dude was allergic to simple things like wood, plywood, and so forth. Some of it was probably”harvested” from old house trailers too. So I don’t enjoy the smell.

      It does tend to encourage me to keep the floor empty. I am slowly “catching up” to keeping everything in the shop a few inches high. Lots of castor wheels and things propped on a few bits of 2″x4″ to keep it out of the mess.

  2. I’ve learned this same lesson renovating our first house. When we moved, I applied it with vigor. Sure, writing the checks hurts, but when it’s done you can sit back and take your pleasure in the lack of chiropractor visits.

  3. Zendo Deb says:

    Everybody needs a workshop. Women traditionally called them sewing rooms or craft rooms. I’m in the middle of building a 2ft by 7ft Ruobo work bench. (18th Century French dude who had a lot to say about woodworking.)

    • AdaptiveCurmudgeon says:

      You’re right that everyone needs a place to do their thing.

      My workbench is of neolithic crudity compared to a nice Ruobo bench.

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