In reply to eastsideTim :
My advice would be to reduce and simplify. Is there anyway you could add another stall to your existing garage.
In reply to eastsideTim :
My advice would be to reduce and simplify. Is there anyway you could add another stall to your existing garage.
frenchyd said:In reply to eastsideTim :
My advice would be to reduce and simplify. Is there anyway you could add another stall to your existing garage.
Sadly, no - I'm in a bi-level on a small piece of property, and there are underground utilities running on either side of my house.
I decided ~15 years ago that I was done renting storage or workshop space. If there's any way you could get to that point I'd recommend it. I hate having both the rent payment and the stuff being remote. It makes it both inconvenient to use and makes you hold on to more than you otherwise would since "out of sight, out of mind" is really true.
In reply to dculberson :
Absolutely correct. Further if you figure the cost of rental plus the cost of commute. It's likely more than building would cost you.
Put one of those rubbermaid sheds in the backyard for the E36 M3 you want to throw away in 5 years
I actually have one of those sheds for the majority of my lawn and house tools 
Zoning rules in my area have changed such that I think you need a permit to put anything in now, whereas in the past, you could put a shed up that was 50 square feet or under. Mine is 7x7. It's still tempting to pull a permit and get a bigger shed in my backyard, but I am a little concerned about my neighbors, I know at least one of them did not get a permit, and I'd hate to have them get dinged by an inspector while they were out checking my place.
As for shop space, I tend to agree. When wae was looking for a shop, I considered going in with him on it, but passed, partially because of the cost, but mostly because anything that was going to be convenient for him would be inconvenient for me, and vice versa. If I had a shop away from home, it'd need to be within 15 minutes, and large enough for all my projects, no splitting between it and my garage. His shop is really cool, though.
Other than helping my nephew muffle his current truck(souped up 5.0 with headers, glasspacks, and turndowns right under the cab), I think I'm going to work on projects this weekend instead of too much more cleanup (except maybe moving to a smaller storage locker or moving some crap out to the current one). At the least, I'd like to seal up the Beetle, so it can sit outside in the weather when something else is being worked on. Maybe if I can complete some projects, I will be more willing to get rid of some of the spares I've been keeping around.
In other news we can build sheds under 200sf without a permit, and i'm tempted to go buy some lumber. Bringing home a trailer full of volkswagen stuff monday. Reality says throw a couple shelves in the harbor freight tent garage and duct tape the rips in it to get through winter and hope i can stomach the incoming quote from the garage guys to add on to give me a usable space.
while I've been cleaning stuff out and dumping a bunch of crap - i mean totally good stuff - on stampie, i still have 5 cars that should be inside that are outside or in trailers.
i did only come home with the same amount of cars from florida as i left with. Plus a golf cart.
I don't hoard in other areas of my life, just car parts. And cars. And trailers. Crap, i have the future drag week trailer to pick up still.
I went backwards today... after buying Woody's Max Jack... at least I have two weeks to think about where I can put it... 
We hold these truths to be self evident, or whatever:
I am learning to look at it like hiring a person for a job. You interview a bunch of people and three of them are good. You make an offer to the best one, not because the other two aren't good, but because the best one is better. Just thinking about this thread makes me realize I need to let go of my motorcycle project. I have a fair amount of time in it; I have a fair amount of money in it; I have almost all of it; I have a motor that only has seven miles on it; I have parts that I made from scratch that I am proud of, but it is not my coolest project. It is not the second coolest and probably not even the third. It can go.
You will never run out of projects because you will never run out of dreams. If the $2000 Challenge shows us anything, you will never really run out of money, either. You only run out of time. Save your time for the projects that give you the most smiles; nothing less is worth it. You will think of more projects before your current one is finished, anyway.
That's my two cents, YMMV.
Matthew
dculberson said:I decided ~15 years ago that I was done renting storage or workshop space. If there's any way you could get to that point I'd recommend it. I hate having both the rent payment and the stuff being remote. It makes it both inconvenient to use and makes you hold on to more than you otherwise would since "out of sight, out of mind" is really true.
While I kind of agree, it also keeps me grounded to know that I'm spending $450/mo to hoard E36 M3. ($300/mo for the Batcave, which is a roughly 30x20 garage where I can actually work on things, and $150/mo for the Batcave-Annex, which is a 10x20 storage locker for offsite storage to get things out of my way)
When I move things to the oddly more expensive storage locker, I ask myself, is it really worth spending money to save this?
In reply to Knurled. :
I've had a lot of the same discussions with myself. There's a pretty limited amount of space at Toiletbird Industries based on the amount of shelving that we have and the amount of open work space that we want to keep. To put in a new tool or to store junk at this point pretty much means that I've got to build more shelving and it's got to be built above the existing shelving units. At about fifty cents per square foot each month, plus the labor involved in having to build more shelves, plus the material cost to go buy the lumber to build those shelves, I can start to say no to plenty of stuff!
The other thing about having rental shop space is that I share it with my brother and I have company there occasionally -- it's where I keep a portion of my bourbon collection, so some of the company is pure socializing as opposed to actively working on anything. Since it's shared space, I have an incentive to keep things at least a little bit cleaned up. And nothing will motivate you to clean up like having guests come over!
I'm still a pretty major work-in-progress on that front, though. One of the downsides is that the shop is about a 25 minute round-trip drive so, unlike the garage, I can't just step out for 10-15 minutes to do some small cleanup or organization. If I'm going to go over there, I need to budget at least an hour and a half total to make it worth the drive.
Decided to keep the 10x10 locker over the winter after another walkthrough of the garage. Started moving over a few things that will make more room available for working on a car over the winter. Also dragged out the Miata trunk I got from EvanB ages ago, and am going to see about plugging the spoiler holes in it and installing it on the ratty Miata this weekend. That’ll be one less job to do later, and I can scrap the current trunk lid.
Robbie said:In reply to egnorant :
So, um, would this Miata likely make a drive up to Chicago?
Not legally! It is the ugliest Miata on the planet. I drove it around and it seemed...passable, but it does have many problems. Automatic, oil leak(s), no straight panels, magnetic towing tail lights, interior was a battlefield between a dog and a cat, lost key, torn top, bungie cords holding a lot of stuff on and the headlights don't go down. I ain't brave/stupid/adventuresome enough to try for Chicago.
Bruce
Bruce
egnorant said:Robbie said:In reply to egnorant :
So, um, would this Miata likely make a drive up to Chicago?
Not legally! It is the ugliest Miata on the planet. I drove it around and it seemed...passable, but it does have many problems. Automatic, oil leak(s), no straight panels, magnetic towing tail lights, interior was a battlefield between a dog and a cat, lost key, torn top, bungie cords holding a lot of stuff on and the headlights don't go down. I ain't brave/stupid/adventuresome enough to try for Chicago.
Bruce
Bruce
That sounds like the perfect start to a Roadkill episode! What could possibly go wrong? LOL!
Bent-Valve said:egnorant said:Robbie said:In reply to egnorant :
So, um, would this Miata likely make a drive up to Chicago?
Not legally! It is the ugliest Miata on the planet. I drove it around and it seemed...passable, but it does have many problems. Automatic, oil leak(s), no straight panels, magnetic towing tail lights, interior was a battlefield between a dog and a cat, lost key, torn top, bungie cords holding a lot of stuff on and the headlights don't go down. I ain't brave/stupid/adventuresome enough to try for Chicago.
Bruce
Bruce
That sounds like the perfect start to a Roadkill episode! What could possibly go wrong? LOL!
I may work up a proposition/challenge for someone to do a fly and drive in this POS. My brother thinks it would be criminal of me to ask more than the cost of a BBQ sandwich, but being the hard bargainer that I am I might get one of those deviled egg things too!
Bruce
Zombie thread update - with the whole shelter-at-home thing going on, I spent a good chunk of the weekend digging through my garage, sorting parts, and throwing away quite a bit. I've also started a garage sale thread in the parts for sale forum to see if anyone wants some of my crap before it gets thrown away. I think that is one of my big problems - I hate the idea of just tossing something if it could be useful to someone else. I just don't have the time to find that person for all the stuff I'm getting rid of, though.
Right now, with everything scattered, there's no way a car can fit in the garage. I'm trying to pack whatever I keep in a way it's easy to go back through if I want to purge more. Once I'm done, a car will fit easily, and I think there will actually be room to work on smaller projects at the same time.
Still have the storage locker, and probably will until after the challenge.
It can be done!
I have worked on it most days since being laid off, doing at least one thing, just one thing ever time I go out there.
I ripped down 4 walls, removed a rotted 6 foot window and patched the wall, recycled the wood and pegboard, bought a bag of plastic hooks, organized my tools somewhat better than ever I have. And went through an entire box of heavy duty trash bags. I have metal for a scrap run when we can do that again.
so the embarrassing photo before, a disaster area, and this was during the clean up!
And as it is today, I am not completely done but I have it to a manageable state and can move forward with projects:
NOHOME said
Tools get a free pass on the "junk" field demotion. You cant have too many tools.
Pete
This is becoming my problem. I use to justify tool purchases to get projects done as it was cheeped to get the tool then pay someone with the tool to do it.
dean1484 said:NOHOME said
Tools get a free pass on the "junk" field demotion. You cant have too many tools.
Pete
This is becoming my problem. I use to justify tool purchases to get projects done as it was cheeped to get the tool then pay someone with the tool to do it.
Same for me. So far automotive specialty tools take up less space than any of my duplicates, so cutting down on them is not a huge priority. From a space usage standpoint, my drill press, hydraulic press, and welder take up a ton of room for tools that aren’t used much, but are way too useful when they are needed.
I really should filter down my duplicates (especially sockets/wrenches). I probably have enough to build emergency kits for a couple cars, in addition to the rallycross kit.
eastsideTim said:I think that is one of my big problems - I hate the idea of just tossing something if it could be useful to someone else. I just don't have the time to find that person for all the stuff I'm getting rid of, though.
I've realized this is a major hurdle for me as well. I know how hard it is to come up with obsolete stuff so I have a hard time trashing something that I'm afraid somebody will come along a day, week, or month later and say "Oh man...I could have used that!"
I think I just need to get over it. I hate shipping stuff, so if it doesn't get snapped up pretty quick on the local classifieds, I need to just cut it loose, I guess.
In reply to Bent-Valve (FS) :
It's really looking good, Bent-Valve. Sorry to hear about the layoff. I'm fortunate to not have been laid off (yet) but ironically have LESS time in the shop as a result of wearing more "hats" in the workplace.
In reply to ClemSparks :
Thanks. I was hoping to inspire others especially if they are stuck at home that they can get closer to the perfect or at least usable work space.
I to have way to many duplicate tools right now. I'm bad at selling stuff like so many others here.
I also bought a bunch of parts not long ago, but most of them don't have a project assigned to them. While cleaning I came up with an idea for them.
All Miata, 2 front spindles, a center rear section and axles out to lugnuts, steering rack, a Honda Fireblade 1 liter motorcycle engine. A Kirkley seat.
Forget the suspension, a steel frame go kart for "pit duty"
And now I'm back where this thread started, hoarding projects....
Filled the trash can tonight, including with some stuff that I was willing to give away for free in my garage sale thread. So, I must be "improving" a bit. I'm really going to try not to pick up stuff too much before I need it (I say as I look over at the nitrous kit I bought recently, without a challenge car to attach it to). There's another bag of trash, plus a piece of automotive carpet still in the garage that I can throw in the can tomorrow, after trash pickup. I'm sure I'll fill it up again next week, and if I can keep my momentum up, again the week after.
I also have a minifridge I am going to leave at the curb with a "free" sign on it sometime this weekend, if it doesn't rain.
This week's goal is to clear enough out that I can take down at least one shelving unit - I'll probably toss it in my storage unit, though, just in case I need it in the future, at least until it is time to get rid of the storage locker.
Another zombie thread revival. Had some improving and some backsliding in the last ten months. I continued to clean up the garage (and the house) a bit. However, instead of buying a cheap clunker for the challenge, that I didn't care if it'd get scrapped in Gainesville, I bought Curtis's Impala SS. Dang, that thing takes up space. One advantage of having worked on it, though, is I had to create extra space in the garage. At the beginning of winter, I was able to arrange things so both the S10 and Beetle fit there. Problem is, there is pretty much no room to actually work on anything over the winter, so garage projects are (mostly) stalled out until the roads are no longer salted. wae has graciously allowed me to use Toiletbird for a quick teardown of an engine donor for the S10, so I've started a search for a vehicle, or already pulled engine. It I can get it LS-swapped in the spring, that'll be a major jump forward in project work. The Impala will likely also go up for sale when the weather gets better. I like it, but I just haven't gelled with it like I'd hoped.
Weather is sucking hard here, so I also haven't gotten to the storage locker in a while. It is paid up until the end of April, and I am hoping to only pay for a few more months after that before clearing it out. Maybe during an above-freezing day, I'll drive out there, and see if I can start filling up some boxes and trash bags for scrapping/throwing out/selling stuff. Been a bit leery of dealing with people in person lately, but I think I need to get over it. As my plans for the S10 start to solidify, I think I can start looking into getting rid of some of the spares, if I know I won't need them.
As for the house, it is still a mess, but I have been managing to get rid of some things. The low hanging fruit is mostly gone, so it has slowed down in the last few months. I am hoping to take advantage of some of the bad weather to stay inside and start sorting through photos and putting some in albums, scanning some, giving away some to the family genealogy fans, and pitching the rest. My dad spent a fortune on some really nice albums he intended to fill with picture for my sister and in the year before he passed, and was never able to get to it. I'd like to get one put together for myself, since it'd take up a small amount of shelf space, and be easy to pick up and go through whenever I feel like it.
Oh yeah, in terms of dumb ideas, I've been wondering lately if I should sell the Miata and buy a Honda Beat, since it takes up less space.
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