Thread: New shop in New Mexico - Family Woodworking

Well, after 40 years of living in Florida, it was time for a climate change for us. Only problem was how to take the 40x60 shop building with us. (I posted a shop tour of the old shop in '08.) But of course after having that shop for 14 years, there were many changes that would be nice to make. That was the only advantage to the coming move?

While waiting for the FL property to sell, we bought the new land and started building the new shop in the summer of 2011. In June I posted looking for ideas on how to build room dividers for the new place. The plan was to build another steel building, but this time divide the new building into three rooms, and insulate the crap out of it. We had a contractor to build the basic building, and then the wife and I finished off the inside. Thanks for all the ideas you guys gave us. It turns out that building the walls was actually quite easy, even for someone with little construction experience. (Also found out that there is a BIG difference between a contractor and a woodworker!) The building was completed and ready for the tools and other shop equipment to be move in by Oct of last year. The 36x60 building was divided into three rooms. The new shop is 36x36. A garage takes up 24x24, and the last 12x24 space is used for storage and an exercise room.

The FL place finally sold in February, and in March the movers showed up to load the shop equipment. Less than a week later we were back in NM to help get everything placed as I had planned. It was interesting figuring out how to make all machinery and cabinets fit into much smaller area, but I had spent a good part of the winter making sketches and had a pretty good idea of how it would work. It turns out that the paper plan worked pretty well, but there were many minor things to tweak after everything was in place. Actually, setting up the new shop was a blast. It was a lot of fun to organize, and then reorganize again and again. Finally, all is finished, and the shop is back in working order.

The new shop has a lot smaller open areas than the previous one, but now that I am mostly retired, how much room does one actually need? Next month the construction of the new observatory will start, so I'm sure the shop will seem a bit small then. So far all is working out well, but for sure the shop tweaking will go on forever.

Source: http://familywoodworking.org/forums/showthread.php?27901-New-shop-in-New-Mexico

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