Space Bankruptcy

A space cannot be for too many uses. You can try, but it'll end up being useless for all of them. Then you have to admit you have a problem, pay off your space debts and decide what's important.

First there was a garage that housed a basic gym setup and some very rudimentary basic homeowner type DIY gear.

Then the woodworking developed into a thing 2018-ish and that space had to be dedicated to woodwork and a gym. The squat rack went and instead I got some squat stands. You do what you must to get two uses out of a space.

Then lockdown happens, you inherit a tonne of 24mm baltic birch, ikea desktops (used as facing on insulated walls) and start filling the space up with machines and tools. You also start building cabinets without thinking too much about why, or what for. This is not negligence, you have no experience and you’re on a creative streak.

Then you start running out of space and you look up and see all that spare space. So you do what anyone does - you put the space to use.

So you install a mezzanine floor and practice your timber framing skills.

Eventually you work your way backwards towards the garage door and create a nice internal space. But you start to feel the tension between the two uses of workshop and gym. Things don’t fit next to each other anymore and weight plates and squat stands start to gather distance.

So you bury your head in the sand and build more cabinets

Which turn out great, because these ones had some thought, but they never seem to get finished… with doors (a theme)

You then use the space for a few years and work out all the kinks and it’s working and you’re pleased. Even if you don’t finish the doors.

Then you buy a woodland and the chainsaws and other tools start creeping in. Not a problem, you think laterally.

But then every day you seem to be managing situations like below. You have to move everything from A > B in order to get to your screws.

Now your workshop is for chopping logs, woodworking, a gym, woodland tool storage, and now that you’ve decided to retrain as a tree surgeon, is now also a store for your climbing gear as well as for storing the ingress of scavenged wood.

When you do squats you’re now face to face with chisels and constantly knocking methylated spirits off the shelf behind you when you squat to the correct depth (below parallel)

And then one day, even though a part of you doesn’t want to acknowledge it, you realise upon returning home that the gym, workshop, tool storage, chainsaw maintenance, climbing equipment storage and maintenance, drum kit storage and general dumping group means that eventually, you acknowledge you have a problem.

And the first step to solving a problem is admitting you have one. The problem I have is that one small space cannot be multiple things.

So I’m going back to basics and starting with a blank wall.

This space is a workshop for woodworking, secure storage of tools and maintenance of those tools.

Watch me make it happen.