Rearranging deck chairs. That’s what it feels like sometimes.
Like everyone, we’re spending way more time at home than we ever thought we would. And, no end in sight. To be fair, it’s not much of a burden to me personally. And, it has allowed me to catch up on the long list of little things that needed fixing around the house. So, Jess starting thinking about rearranging and redecorating the house.
I had started a post on the impact of that plan on my workshop time, but it ran to over 2000 words and wasn’t done. So this is a summing up version.
Two things impact the look and feel of the living space here in the ducal manor house: bookcases and old tools. The living room was an over-the-top display of geek cred. We had 6 full bookcases, 2 half bookcases, and 2 small ones built into the fireplace wall. And they contained NO fiction books. We have long since converted to eReaders and purged almost all our fiction. Clearly, we had more purging to do among the non-fiction titles.
The online tool business was largely confined to the home office and the adjacent small bedroom. But, it had its tendrils here and there around the house in the form of flats of as-yet unlisted tools.
And the home office (where we spent a great deal of time) housed most of the currently listed tools. It felt pretty tight.
Fixing this required the Magic Square game.
We started by taking everything out of the small bedroom. We bought, finished, and installed 5 units of IKEA Ivar. The most flexible shelving units ever devised by man; I’ve had some pieces for over 30 years.
Then, we moved all the listed and unlisted tools back in, along with all the packing and shipping materials. All that went in with the work table I built Jess last year that holds her laptop and the label printer. And we put in Sasha’s cage so she could hang out while Jess packed tools.
That took care of the tool business, now confined to one room. Well, not counting the items queued for cleaning in the basement. And, the junk not worth selling piled in the trailer. But, from a decorative perspective, the house was a lot neater. It allowed us to remove the two half bookcases and Sasha’s cage from the living room. Things started to open up a bit.
It also freed up the Ivar wall unit in the home office. So, I was able to move all my woodworking and furniture history books to the office, where I’d like them anyway. And that freed up two big bookcases in the living room that we consigned to CraigsList.
Suddenly, we had space.
All that didn’t take long to do. What took time was the prep work. Yes, I am a furniture maker, but it’s not worth anyone’s time to make bookcases. Ivar is so cheap, $8 for a 3′ shelf with hardware. It’s hard to buy the wood for that. But, it’s “smooth” sanded at like 80 grit which is fine now. But once it’s dusty? Good luck. So I hit all the shelves with the sander and then a couple coats of amber shellac.
Why shellac? I had it out and it practically dries on contact. I was able to get two coats on the top side, sand it, put on a final coat. Then, flip the board and put a single coat on the bottom all in a day and a half.
Fast right? Well, yes, but. I had 66 shelves to do (we list a lot of tools) and not so much flat space in my shop. Halting all other operations, I could lay out 13 shelves to dry. So, it took about a week and a half to work through all that and assemble the units in the small bedroom. Now the World Wide HQ of Rusty Crap I Sell on eBay.
So that’s how I spent my holiday break. Now, back to interesting woodworking. Such as fabricating a toothed top to my planing stop and a shooting board. Both were things that had been on my to-do list for way too long.
I am currently working on a replacement for my benchtop mini workbench. I love that thing, but it has some issues as any 1.0 model does. It is a little too small and it is front heavy which requires an awkward clamping arrangement. And there’s no way to clamp it from the right side. I built it for the left end of my old workbench.
I can’t use it that way on the new bench because it would cover the planing stop. Having it on the right allows me to plane and work on joinery or carving at the same time. Quite handy for building an ambry.
So the new one is longer and a little lower plus a way to clamp it from either side. All that will make it more comfortable when carving with support for larger boards. Plus it will have an end vise for joinery work as the old one did.
I should finish that in a day or two and will post pictures then.
Sheesh, 885 words. I guess that *is* shorter than 2100, but…
Update 13 Jan 2021
I don’t really have a “before” picture since you tend to dive in. So here are current state pictures. The office (yellow room) is “done” for the purpose of this effort. The Tool Room (blue room) is also “done” for this effort. It will get repainted and such later on. The other picture is the living room in its current state. Still need to move out that last 1/2 shelving unit and replace the last dog cage with a padded bench. We’re expecting the new window in the next couple of weeks. The remaining bookcases are out of the frame over my right shoulder.
