That Time Bill & his Brother Got a Real Workspace

A little over a year ago, my dad finally retired when he found someone to buy the building his business was in.  He designed and sold kitchens and in the back he had a decent-sized steel building that was outfitted as a woodworking shop with some pretty decent tools.  Whenever we had a wood-like project to work on, we'd just take it out there and use that space since there was plenty of room, tools, a bathroom, and heat.  The whole deal came together kind of fast, so we didn't have a lot of time to figure things out, but we wanted to save the tools and come up with a place to use them since neither of us has enough basement, garage, or back yard for it.  I already had a 10x30 storage garage that I kept some household stull and the trailer in so we rented the one next door with a promise that the owner would take down the dividing wall and we could pay to have a 240V circuit run to the unit.  I started with this:

And we turned it into this:

The astute among you will notice that there is still a wall between the two units.  This made the space pretty difficult to use, since the table saw and its outfeed table (which is also the main workbench) takes up most of the open space, leaving only a small place to squeeze through.  The space on the left for automotive work is also tight, making it kind of a one-person workshop.  But, for the money it wasn't a bad deal for 600 sq ft of space with included electric and security.  When the owner of the lot was opening up a new location, we went and looked at the new units.  He initially offered us 2 12x30 garages with the wall removed, but then came back and said he could only give us 10 foot of "open space" in the front and the wall would have to remain through the other 20 feet.  We could have done a 12x60 and we thought about that, but that still would have been pretty tight.  As we mulled that over, I found a guy with some light industrial space available not far away for a relatively reasonable monthly rent.

The storage locker worked okay, but we lacked the electric that we really needed -- the 240 circuit was going to cost about $1,400 to install, so we never did -- plus there was no insulation, no heat, no water, and the only bathroom was a port-o-let about 100 yards away.  The new place has a 12x12 garage door, is nominally 20x70, has insulation, a gas furnace, a little office space, all the power we need, and its own bathroom.

We got the keys last Saturday and started moving in this week.  As a bonus, right before we went to hand over the check and get the keys, the landlady called and told me that the large 8x4x12 shelving unit that was in there needed a home.  I was expecting her to give me a price for us to buy it from the previous tenant, but when she told me that she just wanted to know if it was okay with us for him to leave it behind, I said "SOLD!", so free shelves!

We've got most of the stuff moved over.  It's actually been a pretty pleasant move since we can bring the truck and trailer inside to unload while shielded from the elements:

So far, we have most of the things from the old place moved in - most of the tools, 32ft worth of sturdy shelving (16ft of which we didn't have room for at the old place and 8ft of which we haven't decided where to place yet!), all the various bins of stuff that still haven't been unpacked from the initial move.  Still to go are the table saw and the outfeed table as well as some tires, lumber, saw horses, and other miscellaneous stuff.  That should be one more trailer/truck load.  Then we can go through the process of getting things unpacked for real and organized.  We were under a lot of pressure, both time and emotional, to get things packed up when we were clearing out dad's shop, so there are bins that are like the one that has (not making this up) some wood dowels, a can of belt dressing, some drywall anchors, a ratchet strap, a tub of spackle, a tub of wood putty, and a hardware store baggie of random screws and bolts.  Organizing some of that will be made easier since my brother has a friend that owns a jewelry shop who gave him these:

(yeah, I don't know why the picture is sideways...)

I think we're going to build a cart to put them so that they're three-high, back-to-back and then put a worktop with a little ledge on top.  That's a mantra that we've been discussing over the last couple days - putting everything on wheels.  We're even looking at some options to put retractable wheels on the table saw and the outfeed table.  You want to be able to feed an 8' sheet into the saw, which means you need to have 9' of clear space behind the edge of the blade.  It weighs about 500 pounds, so our previous mantra was to place the saw and build the shop around it.  Discussions over whisky the other night, however, led us to the realization that if we can mount the saw on retractable wheels, we can place it elsewhere for "normal" use and/or storage and then slide it out to the middle of the shop when we need to actually cut that sort of thing.  Being able to roll that around will open up a ton of floor space for doing whatever we need to do.

There is a fairly significant cost difference to this new space - not just in rent, but in utilities as well (which are more expensive being designated as "commercial").  We considered taking on a third partner to help defer the costs, but in the end decided that wasn't the best option.  My plan right now is to use this space to dismantle cars and part them out to generate just enough income to defer the increase in costs.  If we can make more than a break-even number of the increase, then we can apply that to either the entire shop cost and/or use it to fund additional equipment for the shop (like a lift!).  So far, just with some old motorcycle and PT Cruiser parts that I had stashed in the garage at home that I was going to throw away anyway, I've already netted enough to pay for the first month's delta and I'm on my way to the second month.

Very cool! I'm looking forward to reading about it.

Congratulations! I've been looking for some work space in the Tampa area and would love to find something like you did.

Shop space always makes me all warm and fuzzy.

If I wasn't already fuzzy enough to begin with.

Other than some lumber that needs to be moved, everything from the old place is now in the new place!  I have some things in my garage and basement at home that need to find their way out there yet -- tool chest, press, some tires, and stuff like that -- but the move is more or less complete at this stage and we're getting settled in.

Speaking of the move, the king of the shop is the Jet table saw.  It weighs in at about 500+ pounds and as previously mentioned, needs a lot of working room around it.  On Friday night, we were looking at the snow in the forecast and the other things that needed to be done with the trailer (more on that in a minute), and decided to get it moved.  A friend of mine came over earlier in the day and helped me gather up and move everything that was left except the outfeed table and the saw, but she had to go before I could get any other muscle.  My brother and I got the table on the trailer without too much effort but the shoulder dolly wasn't doing it for the saw.  There was a pretty heavy-duty cart that we had so we put the saw on it and strapped it down.  Using some wood ramps, we leveraged a winch to pull it up on to the trailer and strapped it down.  Success!

Sort of.

About half way to the new shop, I noticed that the saw was riding funny, so we pulled over to take a look.  That heavy duty cart?  Yeah:

The thing split right in two, putting the saw at an angle.  The good news is that by tightening up the straps, I was able to re-secure the saw and we got it to the shop without further incident.  Because of the slope of the drive, there's a spot where the tail of the trailer is right at the edge of the garage door opening but only about two inches off the ground, if that.  So, we were able to slide the saw off the back of the trailer onto the concrete and then right into position.

And one more shot of that glorious free shelving unit:

There was a mention above about needing to do something else with the trailer.  Well, I've got this friend who called me up over Christmas and asked me what kind of cars I was looking to try to part out.  Turns out his son rear-ended someone in his 2005 Focus and the car wasn't worth fixing.  I was all about it, but told him that I wouldn't be able to pick it up until late Jan, early Feb and totally understood that he wouldn't be able to hang on to it that long.  When we were able to move in about 10 days ahead of schedule I called him back to see if he still had the car and how much he wanted for it.  By the end of the conversation, we agreed that I'd help him remove some cars and for my efforts I could have them.  In addition to the Focus there is an '05 Caravan, a Toyota Matrix, a Mazda Protege, and 2 older Mazda 626es.  Or maybe they're MX-6es.  Not 100% sure.  It sounds like Tim can use one of them for his nephew, the Caravan might be worth parting, there might be a few parts on the Matrix worth pulling, and the rest is just good for scrapping whole to just be done with them.

With the impending snowpocalypse, though, my buddy called me on Friday evening in a bit of a rush.  The Focus was blocking his dad's garage door and his dad was adamant that the car had to go RFN so he could get his tractor with the snow blade out the next morning when the snow arrived.  Late Friday night I drove on out there and picked up the car and thus my first car to part-out has been acquired.  There's not a ton of value in the car, but if I can use this to jump-start things and fund the purchase of a higher-end wreck, I will consider it a win.  Again, my main goal is to net $175/month to pay for the increase in the shop expenses and anything extra is a bonus.

In order to embrace our "everything on wheels" mantra to make the workspace more usable, we've talked about putting whatever the current dismantling target is on those vehicle dollies so it can be pushed up against the wall and only pulled out to the middle of the room when we're actively tearing into it.  The Hammer Store is having a bit of a sale on the 1,500 lpoubnd ones such that a set of those is basically the same cost as a set of the 1,000 lpoubnd ones.  They won't accept the 20% off coupon on the sale price though, just in case you're thinking about that.  But for $80 before tax, I got two pair so that we can float a car around the floor with relative ease.

We're renting the place from an older couple and they're not interested in spending a lot of money on the place.  I'm okay with that, but it does mean we've got a couple things to do to make it a bit better.  First off, the door to the unit is around the side of the building and the big outdoor light is burned out.  That light is also plugged into our electric and I don't really feel like spending my own money to power a sodium light -- especially when the outside is supposed to be the landlord's responsibility.  I stopped in to the Home Despot last night and found a couple different self-contained LED options for the side of the building.  One is solar, one runs on C batteries and they're both motion detector lights.  I'm not sure where to put them just yet, but I want to try to mount them on magnets and stick them to the side of the steel building out of reach.  

The other foible of the place is that they pay for the water, but if we use more than 1 HCF in a quarter, they'll bill us for the additional usage.  In about a week, we went through about 13 CF of water with really nothing more than the toilet.  It's not a leak, because we've been turning the water off at the meter after each use of the water.  Before implementing a "if it's yellow, let it mellow" policy, I decided to try to replace the guts of the toilet to try to shrink the volume of each flush.  This was a complete Fluidmaster kit that required the removal of the tank from the bowl and the tank bolts were pretty corroded.  Some PB B'laster, four fingers of Scotch, and about 2 hours later, I had the whole thing retrofitted and back together with no leaks.  I'm so concerned about the water issue that I pumped the tank out into a bucket before I started and refilled it with that water when I was finished.  Also, I didn't test it because I didn't want to spend the water.  So, more details as they become available.  Upside is that we're generating plenty of sawdust so alternative toileting is a possibility.  (kidding!  That's just nasty)

While there are a handful of things that do need to come over still and there's a ton of unpacking and organizing that needs to happen, I am really happy overall with this space.  If I can get it to at least pay for the increase in spend, it'll be great.  If it can become self-funding, it'll be absolutely perfect.  Except for the whole water thing.  That's pretty annoying.

20x70 high bay is amazing

It appears that the toilet overhaul is working in the sense that it is consuming way less water per flush, which is good.  You just can't do any, uh...  serious business let's say unless you open the tank and pump up the volume as it were.  The stupid shut-off valve for the toilet has started to leak, though, so that will need to be addressed.  For now, we're just turning off the master cut-off at the meter (which we were doing anyway), so it doesn't affect us too badly.

When she came over to help move a trailer-full of stuff, one of my friends gave me a shop-warming present and I can confirm it makes the whole place a much nicer spot to be in:

The first victim is now in the shop and I've already started tearing into it.  Those vehicle dollies give us some extra room, but they still take a bit of effort to get moving - especially when the casters aren't pointing in the direction you want to start moving.

One big advantage to also having woodworking going on in there is that there's plenty of sawdust to help mop up the snow and ice that's melting off the car!

I pulled a handful of parts last night and went out before work this morning to take some measurements and get some pictures.  I got a giant roll of white paper from an auction for about $15 a while back, so I grabbed a length of that and set up my folding worktable to make a portable photo booth:

I'm going to go ahead and start listing some things on eBay and also put a "parting out" ad on the local craigslist.  Being able to start this process on a car that is only costing me some gas and my time is a pretty good thing, as opposed to having gone out and bought the car with my own capital.  What should have occurred to me is that the parts that sell for a decent amount of money are parts that people really need and they need them because theirs is missing or broken.  So it stands to reason that it wouldn't be unusual for that part on a salvage car to be missing or broken as well.  So, if you were counting on getting $75 for a center console and you find out later that the car you just bought doesn't have a good one, that's a chunk of change pulled out of the equation.  Going in to a purchase with the 'high dollar' list and checking those things out before purchase and adjusting the offer accordingly is a necessary step to avoid taking a bath on one of these deals.  Again, something that should have been obvious from the get-go, but it's a good lesson to learn on a car that is almost 100% profit.

A space like that near me would be $1000 a month, easy. I'm terribly envious.

I wasn't sure if this would work.

It does.

It is raining like crazy here and the temp is dropping fast.  But I'm warm and dry while I swap out the control arm bushings on the motorhome.

Apparently the control arm bushings on the upper left side were worn pretty bad.   The old ones appear to be a little over a millimeter smaller than the fresh ones.  There's also some slop in the steering arm but those parts don't seem to exist....