Yet again, I didn’t plan on this being a permanent change, but once I get into it, I can’t help myself: I built in a bench, shelves, cabinets, electrical…
But before all that, I ran a really tough half marathon in September – “Bear Creek Half”.
At the beginning of the race, I noticed that nobody else seems to wear bright colors. So it’s pretty easy to spot me in photographs. After the first climb, the view at the top was incredible – and there were cows everywhere. I started wondering if it was really true that red makes cows angry? Or is that bulls? Either way, they didn’t seem to care. It was an incredibly strenuous race, and the 80+ degree weather didn’t help. But I finished in the top ten overall (6th) – and my fancy new Garmin watch suggested I rest for 66 hours. The girls were quite happy to rest with me.
So back to the point of the post. I’m still trying to reuse wood, so just to start making the cabinets I had to glue a lot of smaller pieces together. Then I used the special cabinet jigs Misha gave me years ago to drill all the holes for adjustable shelving.
OK first base cabinets going in – because the floor slopes in every direction, and the wall isn’t square, it took a while to get this all lined up.
These cabinets we’ve had in the garage for a long time. Finally they are in a good place – I’ll fill them up with things that don’t do well getting dusty.
Now I need some shelves…
I decided to make the work top stepped down so that I can use my miter saw here. The height of the step is exactly the same as the height of the miter saw base, so that wood can be supported on the bench top at the left side. But first the old bench top is too short, and has a piece cut out of it. Need to fix that.
A bit hard to see here, but this is how it works. I still need to use spacers to support the wood on the right side of the saw.
Oh, and there was a lot of wiring to do – it all got pulled out when I was putting the plywood up.
Shelves for all the paint cans I’ve accumulated.
On the right of the photo below is where I plan to put my dust collector. When I re-wired, I added a three-way switch so I can turn the dust collector on or off from different places in the garage…
… and dust collection means I have to put together all the ducting for it. This is turning into a major project.
So here’s the problem with doing all this:
The electrical panel is currently partially hidden behind that wood post. I had some electricians come over to look at moving it (because it’s not to code here). One of the electricians said “why don’t you just get the post moved?” Exactly.
These stupid wood posts are at best a temporary structural solution that I should fix, and I have been planning to (for years). They support beams that are undersized and sag, and they are not properly braced for earthquakes. But to fix them – which I absolutely should – I need to get the foundations replaced here… Which would involve tearing out all the work I just wrote about.
