The Shop

We decided a while ago that a shop was going to be an essential feature of any house we owned.  If at all possible, we wanted to avoid putting it in the cellar.  With every house we looked at, we considered where the shop would go - would a sheet of plywood fit down those stairs? around that corner? was there any chance of natural light? how would dust mitigation work? sound?

For now, we have a bit of a compromise.  Our dream is to build an out-building on our property to house the shop where we can have good light and a chunk of yard as a buffer from the dust and noise.  Until then, we have decided to use the back room on the ground floor.  The noise and at least some of the dust will be up close and personal for a while since it is right off the kitchen and we'll have to walk through the shop to get to our laundry room and ground floor bathroom, but it's not in the cellar and there are some nice windows and a door into the back yard right next to the driveway.  We kind of figure that we'll be spending a fair amount of time in there during at least these next couple of years so we hope that the convenience will outweigh the mess.  We already found some really cool doors on craigs list that we will hang between the kitchen and shop.  Now we need to find something to fill the window opening.

As for tools and supplies, we are probably pretty good on hand tools and small power equipment.  We both had hand tools even before we met and Tom had some small power tools, but since we got married Tom has added a lot more to the collection (this is the tip of the iceberg).

We're both kind of amazed at how much stuff we managed to cram into our 1 bedroom apartment.   Of course, we did live with a set of bar clamps under the bed for the last couple of years.  Since we bought the house, we bought a band saw through my uncle's business,

 picked up the mini-lathe that was sitting mostly unused in my parent's cellar and then, a few weeks ago, we got another big load.

Of their own free will, my dad and brother made the trip out to my aunt and uncle's house in Cleveland on a friday night.  Dad took the bus from NY to State College, PA where he met up with my brother, Andrew.  They continued on to Cleveland that night.  There, they loaded up my brother's trailer with a bunch of lumber (mostly 12' lengths of oak with a bit of poplar mixed in) as well as a table saw and drove it back to our house the following day.  Shortly after we finished unloading, Andrew hopped back in his truck and headed back to State College and we drove my parents (Mom came down the day before to help us with things) to the train station so they could head home.  It was a crazy two days for them and we are still kind of in shock that they did it, but grateful.

Sometime in the next month or so, we will head up to my parent's house to pick up their jointer/surfacer which Dad offered to loan to us for a while.  With that, we will be able to use the unsurfaced lumber that Dad and Andrew brought us.  That will be it for us for a while.  The next thing that I would want to get would be a dust collection system, but I think that's a ways off.  For now, we'll be fine with dust masks and our shop vac.

So that's our shop.  It isn't fully put together yet but, thanks to a lot of help and the generosity of our family, we're actually pretty close.   We can't wait to put it to use.