It seems that my plans change just about every day – as soon as they come into contact with realty in fact 🙂 Initially I had wanted to put down stronger flooring, repair holes, add insulation and then build a couple of workbenches in the main ‘office’ room. The focus on the workbenches meant that without realising it I was planning to get the workshop to a point where I could do everything at once: set ups (and videos), guitar making & modifications and finishing. When I stopped to re-think it occurred to me a more realistic plan would be to start out with the new space only doing what I can’t currently do in the shed – and nothing more for the time being. This means ‘noisy machine woodwork’ and ‘smell guitar spraying’ to put it simply.
And from THAT perspective, I don’t YET need the perfect workbenches in the main room; I just need places to stand the key tools (bandsaw, pillar drill, bobbin sander) and a solid bench to rout on with a vice for filing work etc. I already a free-standing bench for wood work and fixing a vice and 2 of the machine stands are MDF cupboards currently in the storage area. So I’m going to focus on spaces in the priority order of outstanding jobs: 1) Spraying 2) guitar mods / making and lastly, 3) set ups / re-fretting etc. So this re-think has turned my priorities upside down – usefully as it happens. I will then have longer to plan and save the money (and find the right materials) for the standing setup bench and the seated soldering bench that eventually will be the key activities in the former ‘office’ space.
More than anything, I’m noticing how slow this transition is. It’s limited partly because two days of the week are spent with Clare having chemotherapy, partly because money is short and partly because it’s tiring and I’m older and creakier than I once was!
Today all I managed (with my friend Rod’s help) was to buy the last 3 chipboard floor sheets, to fit a few boxes of things from the shed into the car with the aim of just taking them up to the new workshop. When I arrived I was met with good news – they had emptied the ‘spray room’ of all the site owners’ paperwork / boxes weeks or months earlier than I had anticipated. The bad news (but good in another way) was that they’d also concreted the entry to the steps leading up to the Reloved workshop. I was just able to get across it and take the flooring sheets upstairs but couldn’t get my boxes of shed stuff over the wet cement. So that was that for progress… tomorrow we’ll finish the new flooring in the office space and pack up all Rod’s tools and get them back to his workshop. At that point, it’ll be me, my limited range of tools and plenty of time to make a workable spray ‘booth’ area and a usable ‘sawdust’ area. And after that, I’ve got to finish spraying Andrews left-handed strat bodies before assembling and setting them up. I think once I’ve done that spraying in the new space I’ll feel like it’s real and I’m staying! 🙂