MSRaynsford

  I spent a bit more time sorting out the new workshop today. I finally got round to removing junk from the eaves on the other side of the garage and I installed boards on that side while I was up there. It's another large space to store things and the last of the easy spaces to board. I intend to bridge the gaps between the two sides but that seems to require a lot more complex shapes as I cut the boards to go around the joists so I'll have to think about that one. One unexpected bonus from having a roof full of junk belonging to the previous occupants is that I found two rolls of expensive underlay. This will come in very handy when we put carpet in the final bed room. The laser has been up and running and I've actually managed to spend time making a few projects this week. I intend to write them up shortly but as a bank holiday tomorrow the kids will need occupying first :D

Tomorrow, for the first time since we moved into the new house four and a half weeks ago, both children are going to be in school at the same time and I actually have to do some work in my new workshop. I  thought I had prepared enough stock to last a few months but it turns out all of that sold pretty quickly and now I need to spend some time making new boxes.    I actually cut a lot of parts for Antikythera Tablets  before we left the old house so it's mostly just an assembly job but I needed a space to work on (I'm no longer allowed to take parts into the house for assembly :D ). I cleared down one of the benches and had a good tidy of everything else. It's still the same junk just better organised. In particular I now have a packing bench for all of my stock items and packaging.

The replacement shed is now complete and ready to be populated full of stuff from the workshop. It took much longer than expected this week to prepare the slab, put the shed together, paint the whole thing and then repair the gate/fence to close the gaps back up again. The most significant improvement is a guttering on the wall of the garage. Rain now drips off the shed roof and down the garage drain instead of making the garage itself damp. It will probably need so further adjustments when I get the laser cutter up and running again. It's my intention to vent into the gap behind the shed so that the neighbours can't hear it when it's running.  

When we first moved in last week there was an aging shed just outside the garage which was well placed to hold all of the garden equipment and to free up room in the new workshop. The roof was a bit knackered and it was a bit rotten inside but it would have been ok for a few weeks.   It rained all of the moving day and in some way that was actually a good thing. The water was running off the back of the shed and onto the wall of the garage. On the moving day it was so bad that the inside of the garage was actually wet (wish I had taken a photo). The shed must have been like this for years and the rain run off has soaked through the brick work making this whole wall damp. We took the shed down two days after we moved it, all the inherited junk from inside the shed is also now wedged inside the garage. There's three different types of flooring, a million ceramic tiles and twenty large cans of trade paint, some of the colours clearly from the last time round. A week later, exposed to ...

  My new workshop is not only a double garage but it also has eaves which will allow me to store a lot more stuff up and out of the way, meaning I can concentrate on bigger projects that remain entirely inside the garage. This afternoon I spent some time clearing out the first section of the eaves and putting some loft boarding up there. It was a little bit dark and cramped to work in but I clambered around the rafters as required and it looks much better now. I've already started to put some of my own items up there. I think it'll be worth me installing some lighting at some point because most of the time I only need one or two things from these boxes so I could sort them out instead of bringing the whole thing down again.  The other side of the garage had rolls of carpets and a bed frame left by the previous owner so I think I'm probably going to wait for a nicer day before tackling that. I also don't want to accidentally drop something onto my laser and materials so ...

Over the weekend we moved house from Countesthorpe to Kettering, there's loads to do around the new property but we got most of the boxes unpacked and at least vaguely in the right rooms so that allowed me to spend some time on the new workshop. I've upgraded from a single garage to a double garage and this time it's detached from the house which is going to force me to separate the work and living space.  We unloaded everything on Friday in the rain so it was a bit of a mess trying to get everything into the workshop. The new place is already super full of stuff but I think that's because I had two rows of shelves in the previous single garage and now it's all spread over the floor. The first step today was to actually clear some space to move around in. The observant among you may notice that I just took all the junk from the middle and put it in the corner. This is mostly true but at least it's all better packed and I have more space to move around in. I coul...

My main goal for the day was to transpose all of the contents of my garage workshop into the Luton van I have hired for the purpose of moving house. The big day is tomorrow but given that it's taken me all day to load this thing myself I'm pleased that I decided to do it on my own and focus on just moving the house tomorrow. The day has been long and tiring but mostly successful, the only thing I couldn't manage to get into the van was the second laser cutter. This may cause some minor issues for me but I'm hoping the real removals people can find some space for it. We move from Countesthorpe to Kettering tomorrow and I've allocated myself just one evening to unpack it all into the new workshop, fun times.