I know this won't be of interest to all of you, but since I received several questions about my garage/workshop renovation, I thought I'd answer them in a short post.

With any luck. I will have the last bit of flooring installed by Tuesday afternoon. Great, now I have the Moody Blues stuck in my head. Oh well, it's a good song. Given my penchant for planning, many of you probably think that once that last piece of flooring is down, I know precisely the steps that will follow. I hate to disappoint, but I don't have a clue. OK, that's not true, but I don't have a firm plan.

The last time I had enough open space to spread my tools around was in 1985 when I opened my cabinet shop. After that, I was crammed into a 10'x16' space in our basement for five years and then I spent 25 years shuffling between a 12' x 16' workshop and whatever space I could steal from my garage. I don't know how to work in a space that is 22' (6.7m)  feet deep, 16' (4.9m)  wide at one end spreading out to 22' wide at the other. Heck, my muscle memory still has me stepping up when I cross the foundation wall I can no longer even see.

I am going to finish the partition wall. I am going to remove the metal working work bench. I am going to remove some of the wall mounted storage and replace it with some new, albeit temporary wall mounted storage. Then 'm going to move my tools back in and try to get some work done. I have a couple cabinets to build.

My overall goal for this shop is for it to be reasonably convenient and extremely safe to work in. The tools I use all the time (table saw) will be centrally located. The tools I use on a project basis are on wheels and will be stored against the wall. I plan to wheel them out to a central location where I can connect them to power and dust collection — I just don't know where that location is. Knowing that is important, as the power and dust collection lines will be run under the floor — in other words, I have one chance to get that right.

I've decided to work for a while and "see where the paths emerge before pouring the sidewalks" as it were. Although my goal is to totally eliminate extension cords and air hoses running all over the floor, I will put up with them (probably hanging from above) for a few months. I think the final outfitting of the shop is a job I can do later in the year, or even early in the spring. I don't want to end up working in a shop that works on paper, but not in real life.

I hope you all have a great week!