All for Want of a Proper Shop

My second-floor shop is freakishly neat. The bench is mostly bare and the majority of my hand tools are stashed in my chest. The “overflow” hand tools (yes, I have maybe one or two) are in various boxes or hanging neatly on the wall.

On the other side of the room, my computer desk has been cleared of all but the essentials. As I write this, all the peripherals (except my mouse) are stashed in the built-in cabinets that I designed and had built a few years after buying my house. And the books on the shelves above are…actually on the shelves above instead of strewn across my work surface.

Two flights down in the basement, my chop saw and table saw have been dusted clean and pushed back against the wall. I’ve thrown away probably 60′ of moulding…all of it in 6″ or smaller lengths (some people hoard tools; I apparently hoard moulding offcuts). Two old sinks and 16 pairs of shutters have been donated to a local re-use outfit. The many half-empty, rusty cans of paint have been disposed of properly. Everything has a place – and is actually in it.

It wasn’t too long after my study built-in project that I started as managing editor of Popular Woodworking. Had I waited another couple years, I’d have been able to make those cabinets and shelves myself. And indeed, as soon as I started learning in the shop, I started tackling project after project in my house.

I made and installed 8″ baseboards that matched the original – thank you David Thiel for getting me started down that path. I’m pretty sure that was the first time I’d used a router table. (And, having been bit by the hand tool bug thanks in large part to Christopher Schwarz, it remains one of the few times I’ve used the router table.)

When I bought my house, the living room, hallways and staircase were covered in matted, Kelly green carpet, and the dining room had cheap parquet flooring atop two layers of vinyl. And under everything was a layer of 1/8″ Masonite with nails every 4″ or so (what is wrong with people?!). Nasty. All of it. I lived with it for about six years, but I finally snapped late one night and just started ripping it out. So I then had to teach myself to tooth in flooring to replace the many (and large) plywood patches a previous owner had installed.

The next year, I decided to install hardwood floors in the second floor hallway. I didn’t really know how, but hey – the boards stayed where I nailed them. And they still look OK five years later.

I tried to strip the stairs. That did not go well. Three weeks of buckets full of baby-poop brown, goopy sludge later, I opted for paint (after another week of neutralizing all the various strippers I’d tried). That went a lot better.

The 1970s brown tiled and plastic-tubbed bathroom had to go. I took it down to the studs, taught myself to hang and mud drywall (sanding sucks), then had a glass shower installed. I laid and grouted tiny hexagonal tiles on the floor and subway tile on the shower walls, then framed out the walls with flat panels for an Arts & Crafts look, and built and installed a deep medicine cabinet.

Then, with the help and tutelage of Glen Huey, I built for that bathroom my first piece of casework and cut my first dovetails that I was willing to show to the world – the chimney cupboard that appeared on the cover our February 2008 issue (#167). It holds my towels.

I’ve painted every room in the house (as well as the kitchen cabinets) – most of them at least twice. Oh – and every ceiling (my neck hurts from just thinking about it).

You can see my progress as a woodworker throughout the house, and not only in the now many pieces of furniture I’ve built for it. The moulding I installed early on does not look as good at the scarf joints and corners as that from a few years later. And I got faster at it. Last weekend, I installed shoe moulding in two hallways (with many angles and door openings) in just a couple hours (yes, I used a nail gun; sue me). Six years ago, it took me an entire day to do one room. A miter box with a sharp saw on the floor next to you beats running up and down flights of stairs to the chop saw for every cut – trust me on this.

But it’s that very need to run up and down two flights of stairs to access all my tools and machines that made me break down and install the last of the moulding. I’m itching for a “proper” shop – and that was the last bit of work that needed doing before I could put my house up for sale. So now it is. (You can see more of it here if you like.)

It’s a bittersweet feeling; I’ve done so much work on it and learned a great deal while doing it. But it’s done. It’s time to move on and start again – this time in a house with a dry basement (preferably at grade) or a garage. For the last couple years, I’ve been hopping back and forth between my ersatz shop (and up and down my stairs), the shop at work and Christopher Schwarz’s shop. It’s time for a shop of my own. (I think Virginia Woolf would concur).

— Megan Fitzpatrick

p.s. When I do find a new home, it will be one that needs a lot of work, because a) that’s what I can afford b) I like having projects c) I find it satisfying to “rescue” an old building rather than buy a new one. I’ll be documenting the work (and the no doubt many frustrations) on my personal blog…which has been sitting dormant since I bought the domain. You’ll find it at rudemechanicalspress.com (where I’ve posted this same entry). Right now, the site is pretty bare. I hope that changes soon; if it doesn’t, it might mean I’m living under an overpass.