They last time I wrote about the spray coop, or the chicken booth, which ever you approve of, I was still in the planning process. I was figuring out what kind of lights to install, how to set up the flow of operation and all that groovy stuff. Well, after a couple of weeks of this I realized one day, “Gee, it sure would be nice to have an actual bedroom!” I realize how odd this may seem at first. It’s as though I didn’t have a bedroom to speak of at all. I did of course have a bedroom to sleep in and some space to place a few of my possessions. But it was really just a mattress in one corner and a bunch of tools everywhere else.
You see, I have my shop that contains all the big heavy duty machinery like my bandsaw, my edge sander, jointer and the like; but that space doesn’t have enough room for my repair workbench and all the tools I use when repairing and maintaining guitars. All that stuff was in my room.
And then it finally dawned on me, “An actual bedroom…..” It is at this point I decided to scrap the idea of converting the chicken coop into a spray booth and instead convert it to the other half of my shop. The very convenient thing with this idea was now my tools wouldn’t be split between two places, 5 minutes apart. Now they are split between two places, a 30 second walk apart; which at first was awesome! Everything was right there, but now, all of my tools are a 30 second walk apart… While yes, it is better than having to get in my car and drive to get the tool I needed, it is still equally annoying having them all split up like that. Until the day I get a bigger shop that can hold everything (what a concept!) it will work just fine.
It was also much easier to set up the chicken coop as shop space than booth space. All I had to do was run in some power from the tractor barn next door, yes I said tractor barn, by some $20 florescent lights from Home Depot and use lots of Kills paint. Lots and lots of Kills. That coop was nasty smellin. It’s been over a year since I’ve been using the coop as shop space and on a hot day it still smells a bit funky; not as bad as it used to but the smell is there. Flies too, lots of flies on hot days. Though to be honest, I don’t know if the flies are there because it was a chicken coop or because there are 10 cows out in a field right next to the shop. My guess it’s a little bit of column A, a little bit of column B.
And while all this is great it still leaves me without a spray booth! Ah oh well, all in due time. For the time being I don’t mind. It’s given me the chance to try out different ways of finishing. Currently my finish of choice is a Tung oil finish. That stuff is great. It’s easy to work with and looks great. Perhaps I’ll do a post on that. That sounds good, I think I will….
Till next time everyone. Be safe and all that jazz….
