The Toilet-A shop story...

My shop of 20+ years got some well needed upgrades this year. Kind of polishing a turd but we have to work with what we have and my shop beats a gravel driveway.

Fondly called The Toilet because there is always a piece of E36 M3 in it.

It's a barn about 24x24 and 3 stories. The vehicles go into the middle level. An obnoxious amount of car parts has filtered into the other two floors.

First up this year was a new roof. The old roof was corrugated metal and leaked since 2000 when I purchased the property. I do not have any digital pics of the rusty, somewhat functional roof.

Here's a pic of the metal and the cedar shingles torn off and with the new shingles on. No more leaks!

Next up was new lighting. I had about 6 double t12 4' florescents and upgraded to 17 4' LEDs. HUGE upgrade and I still have 5 more LEDs to put up if I want.

Once again I do not have a great pic of the old lights but you'll get the idea:

A three-story workshop?! Man, I'm jealous. Honestly makes me hate living where 6" down you're pretty much hitting bedrock meaning no basement unless you wanna shell out some serious $$$.

Definitely following along for the progress.

That brings me to today. As you can see from the last pic the floor is nasty oil-soaked barn boards. Many, many vehicles have gone through here and all left their mark. The floor is miserable to lay on, terribly uneven so hard to roll stuff around, and miserable to try to keep clean.

Well, my Dad retired from his Real Estate business and asked if I wanted some of his old signs. I said sure and took home 10 or so 4'x8'x1/2" plywood signs. These have been coated in either vinyl or a weather-proof paint and have lasted many New England winters with no damage.

First step was to get the 914 rolling so I had to buy 2 of the cheapest tires I could to replace some very leaky dry-rotted ones. Rolling again so I rolled right out the door and opened up a bunch of space to move my collection of crap about.

You may notice I have a wheel or two in the shop. I currently have 1 Porsche phone dial, 8 Audi TT, 4 with tires, 5 914 steel rims, 4 on the car now, and 4 Pedrini alloys for a 914, then outside I have 4 Vanagon rims with snow tires. Such a pain in the ass. I need to figure out a storage solution or sell a bunch.

So I put in about 6 hours today and ended up having put about 5 or 6 sheets down. berkeleying tired of moving all of the E36 M3 around. Tool box was a mother berkeleyer, especially getting it up the 1/2" to the new floor. I used cedar shims on the low spots and liquid nails on the seams. Everything moves better on the new floor and while it may not be perfect it is so much better than before.

Plan is to paint the floor after I get the lettering removed with a heat gun. It will be really novel to be able to clean up messes rather than watch them soak in. I think I need to purchase another 5 or so sheets of 1/2" plywood to finish but this was a great free start.

Azryael said:

A three-story workshop?! Man, I'm jealous. Honestly makes me hate living where 6" down you're pretty much hitting bedrock meaning no basement unless you wanna shell out some serious $$$.

Definitely following along for the progress.

It's a blessing and a curse. I have held onto so much crap since I have the space. I am dreading having to deal with it all when I move. Next shop will probably be a 40x60 with a 20x20 loft.

3 stories is easy when you live on a cliff...

My building is also basically a barn, but I've been lucky enough to have a concrete floor, and lectricity! 

Love the name. That's perfect.

Best part about those signs is that me and a buddy put most of them up with a post digger for the 4x4s.

preach said:

It's a blessing and a curse. I have held onto so much crap since I have the space. I am dreading having to deal with it all when I move. Next shop will probably be a 40x60 with a 20x20 loft.

3 stories is easy when you live on a cliff...

I can imagine. Right now I have to keep a lot of E36 M3 in the attic, and with a collapsible ladder with which to move things up and down, it really hampers my ability to store or pull things from storage. The irony is that my attic is large enough to build out to an entire second story, nearly doubling the livable square footage.

I cram 5 cars into a 3-car garage, so space for any of my shop machines (drill press, bench grinders, welder, etc.) is fairly limited, and the posh neighbors frown upon many vehicles parked outside...

While I don't necessarily miss the snow and the cancerous road salt, I am envious of the geography up north in both the PNW and NE, as well as the Rockies, and often contemplate a move back to say, Colorado.

2nd day in on the Toilet floor. I have completed 16' in 4 rows and now I am out of free wood. If you look at the last picture I am complete up to the cabinet behind the torpedo heater. I had to use a 4x6 piece of the crappy particle board from the roof but I doused it with porch paint and it will be partially under a work bench.

The shop is berkeleying trashed. Damn I have a lot of tools and other crap. Work benches will go back into place tomorrow and I will be able to load them back up with the cased tools. I'd love to get rid of 90% of the cases but need more time to organize.

The floor will be slippery when wet or oily but I will finally be able to properly clean it when spills happen. Over all I am very very happy. I am really sore from all the lugging heavy E36 M3 and all of the bending with the screw gun but happy. Hard to remember I am 49 not 19.

Tomorrow I will start putting it all back together and hopefully post up an after pic.

Time for a beer.

Minor update. Between winter cold and traveling for work I have not done much. Today, though, much needed this happened:

I have one more case/tray with as many slots as the first tray, but it came with many SS metric fasteners and started this whole upgrade.

Really what started this whole deal we my Tacoma's alternator. I broke an adjuster bolt and did not have a replacement in the Toilet so off I went on four trips and 5 different stores to not find one. So I ordered some on Amazon and went to put the thing together and get the belt adjusted. Well, I promptly lost one of the mounting fasteners. Knowing I do not have a stash of metric fasteners yet I own all german and japanese vehicles, I lost my E36 M3.  A video of me marching from the shop, up the drive, and straight inside to the computer would be hilarious. I ordered about 1000 combined bolts washers and nuts from M4 to M8 or so.

Next time I need a fastener and do not have it I will buy a box of them and add it to these. So happy.

A bit of time organizing and label making. Now I just need to find some fasteners somewhere to bolt the drawers down to the shelf.

In reply to preach :

I love those hardware organisers. Where'd you get that one? I found one at a flea market once, grabbed it, but of course 1 is never enough.

I bought them on Amazon. The first one came with all the fasteners, then I found they used Durham boxes and was able to find others for about $45 and the 5 drawer cabinet was $95ish.

Suddenly:

All together in about an hour, but I need to go get some fluid for it then check for leaks etc.

Well with the help of the 30 minute challenge I have recovered from the re-flooring and I give you this:

Ahh the toilet. Looking good!

A couple very nice additions to the toilet this weekend:

And I am really doing well keeping up with the cleanliness. Pretty happy about that.

Forgotten clean shot...

The leaves are a constant fight.

So today it approached 30* here in NH so I donned a hoodie and headed to the shop. No heat so it was nice to have a warm day.

With the new edition of the sander it needs a home so I started a base/cabinet for it today. Never enough time out there but I got about 1.5 hrs in and tried to brush the rust off my fab skills. I also got to try out my sander and the portaband rig. After busting out the Hobart I realized I am rusty AF welding as you will see.

I started with the best quality metal I had laying around for this...old bed frames:

Sweet 914 workbench and repurposed bed sheet dust cover.

After selecting the perfect piece of E36 M3ty metal I got to work with the chopping. My initial impression of the chop saw ability of the portaband was (as mentioned here prior) was to grab the angle grinder and cut the angle to length. After saying berkeley the chopping ability I set the Pband upright and cut the 45s. WAY better, like butter better, and way less spark and dust than the angle grinder. I imagine I will find a use for the chop set up but not today.

Pieces made:

Then, for the first time in a few years, I busted out the Hobart 175. And proceeded to make some fantastically E36 M3ty welds. Tacked the pieces together fine and strong but my first finish pass did not get nearly enough penetration. Readjusted my process (the weld settings were fine, it was all me) and finished welding it up. Still not pretty:

You can see that I did not do a great job cleaning up the metal before the glue gun but it is one piece and strong.

Next I grabbed some more delightful quality metal I had laying around and cut out the top part of the cabinet. I wanted to have a cap just to keep dust out.

Up here in New England, Mother Nature often provides the perfect clamp for cutting a piece out of sheet metal:

After that was cut my playtime was over and had to take a break. Supposed to be in the 40s a couple days this week so I hope to get more time out there and keep plugging on the cabinet.

I also need to make a pedestal for my grinder and fab up a welding table. Today I welded on the workbench using an old piece of metal shelving as the weld table. I figure with these 3 projects my not so mad welding skills will show back up.

Meh still need to finish the sander stand but been traveling as always. I did knock out the quick jack hangers while Opel bits paint dried.

A bit of art too. Badges but no running grill so...

At 50 I decided that the shop fridge probably should not be on the floor so...

sometimes it's the little things.

Well I ended up not terribly happy with the bed frame stand for the sander, especially after I saw the price on the sheet metal I needed to finish it when I ran out of stock.

I ended up on C-list and found a low end bottom box fora couple bucks. It ended up working out great as I aslo hated where my bench grinder/wire wheel was.

Here is the result:

Cabinet holds everything. Attachments to the sander, spare paper, spare grinder/wire wheels, grinder dresser, spare belts for the band saw, and so much more!

Pretty lame update, but such an improvement.

Freed up a bunch of space today.

That was eh old sander stand. It now holds some stock metal.

4 1950s erector sets and a decent top box.

Selling the e'sets.

Using the top box for the drill area: