Moving to a new shop (Patreon)

For the past month I have been doing one thing: moving my shop and family to a new city. Not to complain or anything, but it was just as bad as I imagined it could be.

There were a number of challenges with this move. The first being that I had tens of thousands of pounds of delicate tools in my basement. Tools that I had to somehow get up to driveway level then transport a couple hundred miles to the new shop. This was compounded by a lack of pallets / crates so had to first build pallets for all the tools. Once that was done I pulled them up the hill from the basement with a winch. 

Whenever I have received a new tool and brought down into the basement, it was like going through hell. I was expecting the regurgitation of the tools back up the hill to be just as bad, only multiplied by ten times or so. To my surprise it was really not too bad. Perhaps I've grown numb to it? Or maybe I've gotten much cleverer with age and experience? I'm not sure, but the 10,000 pound remote controlled winch certainly helped a lot. One tool after another I crammed everything into my garage to await the real challenge: getting everything from A to B.

It was a 7 hour round trip from my house to the new shop. Between space and trailer load limits this turned into a huge time sink. In total I did seven trips with a 16 foot trailer, a trip with a 20 foot uhaul, and a 26 foot lift gate truck. Thankfully I had some help. If you didn't already know it, Destin is a great dude. He flew up to help me make 6 of those trips. He claims that he enjoyed it. I guess he's crazy enough that it might be true.

I was most surprised by the breathtaking amount of junk that I had stacked/crammed/jigsawed in every possible location of the shop. It took me a good week to box up all that up, then another week to 85% unbox them in the new shop.

The new shop is about the same size as my previous shop + garage. It's a high bay warehouse space with a two small offices. It does have one huge advantage over my basement: you can drive a box truck into it. You're probably thinking the same thing I'm thinking: I can now own a forklift. My instincts and my wife tell me that is a bad idea. We'll see :)

The high bay ceilings are amazing for big projects, but they are bad for routing power and air to workbenches. If anyone has tips for doing that cleanly / easily I'd love to hear about it. These rooms are also incredible echo chambers which will be a big problem for video. I see lots of sound dampening baffles and wall coverings in my future. 

I've fit all my major tools into one half of the shop. I'm liking the layout, though I will undoubtedly be tweaking it as I go. The other half of the shop is reserved for big projects, storage, and maybe some future bigger tools / forklifts. 

Unpacking, laying everything out, and installing all the electrical drops and air supply has consumed all my time until now. Now that all my tools are spinning I can start working on my next project in earnest. I'll be sharing more as I make some progress on it. If that's of interest be sure to join the discord as that is where I share most project related stuff. 

I don't really want to think about it but this is actually a temporary rental and I'll be moving it all again sooner or later... The reason for this move was to be closer to family which is awesome. My goal is to get back to a shop on my own property, but that wasn't achievable in the current market so until that point we're living in a rental by this shop. 

As always, I'm grateful for all of your support. Thanks!

- Shane 

Oh we also moved all our house stuff which was a piece of cake compared to the shop. The most exciting part was getting the piano from upstairs to downstairs. Notice anything odd about that engine lift?