Daryl’s Brain

Wow. Two blog posts right after each other. What’s going on?

Well you see, I have some time off right now (Christmas holidays and all) so I have time to just think about things. I also have time to do some things, like organize my “workshop”. If you read part one of the woodworking series you will know that I decided that the first step to “becoming a wood worker” for me is going to be setting up my workspace. Well, the first step to setting up my workspace is to clean the garage and clear enough space so that I am able to set up my workspace.

Cleaning

Kids, don’t let your parents fool you. Cleaning is dangerous. I just got my first woodworking related (indirectly related, anyway) injury while sweeping away the leaves that managed to blow into our garage while we drove our car in and out. There is a piece of metal sticking out of one part of the broom and it poked me in my index finger and drew blood. Ok, it wasn’t very much blood and as far as an injury goes it’s pretty lame. But it was my index finger! The one I use all the time! (Which is why I was using it when it was injured.) Well, nothing for it but to “suck it up and be a man”.

Next Challenge: Small Space

So, if there is actually anybody reading this who is paying attention to what I’ve been saying, then I probably don’t need to say this next part. My guess is, however, that if anyone is reading this at all they are probably just skimming through it because it came up in a Google search and really is not at all what they were looking for. So, I will go over my first, biggest challenge: lack of space.

As you may have gathered from what I’ve said previously (or from the random pictures of my future work area that I will be spattering throughout this post in a sad attempt to make it more interesting) I am going to be setting up my workshop in our garage. It’s a two-car garage, so normally there would be ample space. However, we actually use our garage to park our car in (unlike most people in our neighbourhood) in addition to using it for storage space. This means that I will not have a lot of room to set things up.

If you look at the pictures you can see that I’ve attempted to pile all our stuff in one corner of the third of the garage that I will have to work in. Fortunately, it appears that my parents and in-laws are both forward-looking kinds of people, so my recent Christmas gifts included books and magazines like:

• Setting up Shop
• Space-Saving Mobile Workcenters
• Hard-Working Shop Essentials
• The Small Workshop

So, my next challenge is not only going to be setting up shop, but doing so in a small space which I will be sharing with ’stuff’ and a car. (Hey, “Stuff and a Car” would make a great title for something!) Which brings me to my most recent revelation.

I was thinking that my first big-ish project was going to be the aforementioned coffee table. However, in the interest of A) practice, B) space, and C) making something no one cares to look at, I think I am actually going to start with building some shelving and storage for the garage. My wonderful intuition tells me that this should be great practice.

But one step at a time. For me, my next step is going to be actually setting things up.