day in the shop ruined

[Mike in Mystic]

Well, with a 4 week old son taking up my time recently I haven't had much chance to get in the shop. Today was supposed to be the exception. SWMBO gave me leave to spend the day and I was all set to build myself a long overdue project - Sam Allen's joiner's bench. I have all the supplies, including the Veritas twin-screw vise and a Record 52 1/2 for the front vise. I was really excited.

Then something came over me and I still can't figure out why, but the result was terrible.

As I stood in the middle of my shop, I thought to myself, "this place sure is a mess". That was strange in and of itself, since I usually don't take much notice of these things. The next thing I know I've decided to rearrange my shop to make it more efficient and have a clearer location for the new bench. What in God's name was I thinking!!

After about 5 hours I now have an even messier shop, with piles of hand tools that were on my other bench now stacked on my Unisaw extension table. Various corded tools were there also. My Leigh jig was on the floor. Countless cans and jars of varnish, tung oil, urethanes, waxes, etc. were strewn about. At least 15 woodworking books, project drawings, shipping manifests, etc. were stacked in there too.

And the whole time I wasn't even thinking about woodworking. I was instead trying to come up with a convincing argument to try to send to Charlie Self to convince him why he should support the pharmaceutical industry and send away for his Republican party membership card. .

So, I guess my new bench will have to wait. I think I've given myself at least another weekend's worth of reorganizing before I'll be ready to build anything at all.

Mike

[Edwin Pawlowski]

Don't you just hate that? I should do the same.

Winter is coming and I've been talking about insulating the shop. It is not about cost as the insulation is free. It is the effort of moving everything to get to the walls. My plans to add a shed are put off until next years as the $ went into a re-model on the family room.

Meantime, I have three small projects in the works. They are just more fun that clearing junk out of the garage, but re-organization is probably the best place to put some time in the long run. Ed

[Mark & Juanita]

You have no idea how close to home you hit. What started out this summer as a project to add efficient plywood storage to my shop slowly went from planning for plywood storage to: "since I'm putting this up, I may as well insulate and put up wallboard behind where I'm going to put the plywood storage so I don't have to take it down later", which then became, "since I've gone here, may as well use up the rest of the insulation" to "I'll go up to the cabinets on the wall" to a full-blown, take the cabinets off the walls, remove the garage door and install patio doors and air condition the place reconfiguration project. So now I have a shop that is messier and more disorganized than I have ever had it, but with white, insulated walls, 2/3 of an insulated ceiling, and the beginnings of re-organization. After I get the wood storage rack reconfigured for scraps, I'll start working the dust collector reconfiguration and clamp storage, followed by adding drawers to the workbench, then other more efficient storage. After that's all done, I will probably put up some efficient plywood storage capability.

[ChairMan]

Look at the bright side, when you're done, you'll have clean spaces to put more stuff

[Silvan]

It's worth it. I went through that. Spent two whole days cleaning and organizing.

The net result is that now my shop is pretty damn tidy, and I've been keeping it that way for at least a month or two now. I've been doing a

*lot* more work out there since I did that, and my wild hare to pile everything up in the middle of the floor and redo the shop has proven to have been a wonderful thing.

[mttt]

You're simply reacting like any Father...

Cheer-up! It only gets worse. We've got a three year old and (almost) two-year old twins. They can destroy the living room in under a minute. :)

[clutch]

[snip]

[snip]

You unleased a dark force doing that. Do it too many times and your house and garage /b/b/b/b shop will explode.

Wes

Did the same thing this weekend. I liked the before more than the after.