After 5 years I’ve outgrown the 12′ x 8′ shed that we built in 2015. I can barely move now because there’s so much stuff in there but the biggest problem has been there from the start: it’s a shed in a residential neighbourhood. This means that I can’t really run power tools without inconveniencing my neighbours. It’s not something I really thought about back when we had the shed constructed, possibly because at that time I was only setting up guitars rather than making or upgrading them. Truthfully I reached the point that I needed to move and expand about two years ago but I couldn’t figure out how I could afford such a major step up. As a result my work has become increasingly inefficient as I struggled to do jobs by hand rather than use machine tools the jobs really demanded. I had to hunt around for places I could take my workpieces and tools to and do a backlog of routing hurriedly in unfamiliar surroundings. This led to me making mistakes – some of them major – and wasting a ton of time putting them right.
Eventually I got lucky and, thanks to a friend of a friend, have a workshop that is 3 times larger than the shed (at least) and in which I can make noise (and fumes when necessary) at any time, day or night – because it’s on an industrial estate. Best of all – and this is the enabler – the rent is so low that trying this out for a year represents no significant financial risk. It’s this aspect of it that I’m most grateful for: the ability to see just how much I can improve what I do (and how much more enjoyable the work could be) in a space without the limitations that have recently been holding me back.
I’ve been sketching how I want to use all this lovely space and freedom with my inexpensive Huion graphics tablet and PhotoShop. The picture here is a first ‘think-through’ – which is more thinking through than I did with the shed when it was first built. But now I have some experience behind me to guide me so I’m enjoying the process of imagining! Whatever I end up doing with the space it’s becoming clear that there are short, mid and long term plans to pay attention to. Right now I’m working towards the short term ‘new Reloved Guitars workshop’.
First, I’ve cleaned the walls and the ceiling of 40 years of brown grime. Next I’m going to paint the walls, the ceiling and the shelves with two coats of white emulsion. Then I’ll dismantle the fixed workbench in the largest room (the ‘office’ space) and put it in the ‘storage area’. When the office room is clear I’ll repair the holes in the floor and one or two holes in the ceiling. And that will be the basics done.
The next step will be to modify the workbench and re-built it along the wall that’s going to be my video backdrop. This will be the primary set-up bench where filming will take place. When that’s done, I will then remove two MDF cupboards from the storage space and convert the end of the storage space where they were into a short-term spraying space. In that space I’ll be able to experiment with my heater and the new de-humidifier I’ve bought to create a workable rattle-can spray environment with a focus on completing a number of guitars already in progress. In the future the spray room will be in the 3rd (large) room that is currently a temporary holding-pen for the site owner’s paper accounts – and the plan will be to have my HVLP spray system (not yet used), my buffing wheel and various stands and hanging racks in that space. But this is a couple of months away. The priority is a working bench where I can do and film set ups and a small, temporary spray booth. The rest – like the 2nd large workbench for soldering, fretwork and metalwork – will have to develop more slowly.
In the two months I’ve been waiting to get started with this transition from shed to workshop it has felt a mixture of daunting and exciting. It’s not perfect and I won’t be able to make it perfect either – but it will be good enough to set up, modify and make guitars in ways that I’ve not yet been able to do. Yes, scrubbing the ceiling with a mop and sponge feels like grindingly slow progress – but right now I’ve got 20L of paint in the back of the car, a load of rollers, screws and 4m x 1m new carpet for both the workbench tops. That feels good – and by the end of this weekend the place will be freshly painted white, some new flooring will be down and the first bench will be constructed and covered. That feels like a big step towards the future!