Moving and organizing

Over the past week or so I've been making my new space in the workshop a little home away from home for me and Lachlan. At the rate things are going with my shops, I'll hopefully be spending a LOT of time out there, so I want it to be comfortable for Lachlan and set up in a way that I can get things done in the most efficient way possible. Because right now, my workflow is anything but efficient, especially when Lachlan is napping.

My mom got a kick out of seeing me in action as I tried to pack orders. If Lachlan is napping I have to walk to the opposite side of the house and into my closet to tape a box, because the sound of the packing tape on the tape dispenser is known to wake him from a nap. And my gosh, do I need every minute of his naps to get stuff done. Nobody and nothing messes with his nap time! Quite often I get all the way back to the closet and realize I forgot the tape (no lie), so I walk back out to the kitchen. I almost always get sidetracked with something, and 5 minutes later when I walk back into the closet with my tape, I realize that I left the box sitting on the kitchen counter... And I can't tell you how many hours a week I waste looking for the stickers or the labels or the cards or the ribbon or that ball of twine I KNOW I left on the bed under the pile of envelopes--the pile of blue envelopes, not the pile of green envelopes. Or maybe I put it on the shelf of my closet under the doilies. Or is it in the box with the wood tags? You get the idea.

But that is alllllll about to change. I'm about to have things at my fingertips. I'm about to have a place for everything, and everything in its place. I'm about to start rocking and rolling.

But first I have to finish moving into the new space. It's a slow and painful process, trying to figure out exactly how to set up the space in the best way to hold all my stuff, especially because I keep finding new stuff to add to my inventory almost daily. (Shhhh. Hear that? That's the husband with his hands over his ears, screaming like a mad man. He only thinks I'm joking when he hears me already talking about expanding my area in the workshop...)

So here is a tiny look into the new space at the moment. I am still trying to figure out where to put more shelves or cabinets or peg board or whatever to hold more amounts of my stuff. But for now, it's quite nice.



And YES, that is a couch (that folds down into a bed), a coffee table (that will have those sharp edges modified) and a RUG (ain't she pretty??). It's all  for Lachlan. Really. And yes I am on the lookout for a small dorm size fridge (yeah, baby!). And I already have the little DVD player and TV waiting in the wings for when I need an electronic babysitter. :)



The space is so awesome that I thought I'd better put up a sign to keep the riff-raff out!

Progress in the workshop

After several days of priming and painting walls and floors, my new space in the workshop is finally coming together. Tonight I started moving in some of the awesome things I found at Habitat for Humanity.

On the back wall of the space I have two desks, which are actually some really nice SOLID wood vanities. And when I say solid wood, I mean they weigh a bazillion pounds each. When they were removed from their last home, some of the trim pieces around the edges were removed, but I think with just a bit of stain they will look fabulous. When my wonderful loving husband returns home after spending 6 weeks in Australia (scuba diving, among other things) and asks what he can do to make it up to me, I'll ask him to make a countertop for these two desks. One will be for me, and one will be for Lachlan when he gets bigger. :)



(Sorry the pictures are sort of fuzzy; they were taken with my phone, which is covered in construction crud at the moment.)

On the side wall I put a huge metal locker that was practically brand new (!) and a set of open metal shelves. I still can't believe the deal I got on these at Habitat!!



And on the wall by the main door to the rest of the workshop, I put the awesome base cabinet I found at Habitat. I think it is made of Hickory and it is in near perfect condition and already has its own countertop.



If you're wondering why there is a water faucet in there (to the right of the base cabinet), this was the last space of the workshop left to one day be converted into a stall for a horse. I decided to give it up in order to have more space for all my shop items, but the husband thought we should leave the faucet since it's already there. And the floors are just sheets of plywood, so I guess if anyone ever wanted to convert it back to a space for a horse down the road, they could easily rip up the floors and that horse would have one awesome little home.

I still have several other pieces that I have to move in here, but I need to paint most of them first. Then I'll assess the situation and get whatever else I need. Once the husband gets home, I'll have him finish putting the trim around the top of the walls and the casing around the doors.

I'm just SO excited about this new space. I think my mom and I will start moving some of my stuff out there tomorrow. Weeee!

Where in the world is Melissa?

Sorry I'm back to being a bad blogger again. Things have been hectic for awhile. The husband has been in Australia again since mid-January, and between keeping up with orders for my shops and chasing Lachlan around (wow, he loves to be chased!), I haven't had a lot of time for much else.

My mom is here now and has been entertaining Lachlan while I try to catch up on things. She's also spending Lachlan's naptime helping me get ahead on packaging items. I recently got a shipment of more than 16,000 new bags, and she's packaged up nearly half of them already!

I was starting to really make progress on things, but then the guy we hired to build the new space in our workshop had to leave before he could paint it. So now I'm spending several days doing that. I started priming it last night and will finish that this morning and then hopefully paint it this afternoon. Tomorrow I will hopefully do the floors and repaint some of the new shelving I got from Habitat for Humanity. Hopefully next week I'll be moving in. YAY!!

Here are a few pics of it this morning. It's come a long way, but still a lot to do!

I hope you all have a great weekend!

In the works: Part 2

With all the projects I have in the works right now, I have a lot of stuff. And by a lot of stuff, I mean every closet in every room is jam packed with stuff. And the guest room bed is piled about 2 feet high with stuff. And I have stuff in boxes stacked 6 feet high in my bedroom. And I have more stuff in plastic bins under my bed. And more stuff arrives almost every day.

And so the only logical thing to do was to convert the last remaining free space in our workshop--the space that was reserved to one day house the horse that still lives at my parents--into space to hold my stuff in a more organized and user-friendly manner.

The space, which is about 13 x 18 feet, is currently under construction. The walls and floor are in, and today he added a glass door between the new space and the adjacent space (that I took over last year) where I keep the presses. The new space doesn't have any windows, so the door was added not only to make it easier to use both spaces but also to let in a little bit of natural light.

The space can be accessed via the press room, through the main workshop, or from the outside.









I have spent a lot of time this week at Habitat for Humanity, buying up all their metal shelving units and as many base cabinets as I could find. I got some fantastic stuff. Now I just need to find the time to get it painted. Hopefully I can get that done by the time the space is finished and ready for me to move in.

And then there will be almost no limit to the amount of stuff that I can accumulate!

Real estate and letterpress

What do real estate and letterpress printing have to do with each other? Well, because my letterpress equipment and supplies are currently taking up space on the husband's side of the workshop, the price of real estate becomes a hot topic of discussion and there isn't a lot of room for negotiation as far as rental fees go...

Because I have a good excuse for not being much use out in the workshop lately (thanks, Lachlan!), the husband volunteered to basically move almost everything out of my studio over the weekend so that we could reorganize the space to make room for my newest press. (Isn't he a nice husband? I guess he really wants the space back for the new plasma cutter he's been talking about buying...)

We moved the new press in along the wall where my other two presses are. I now have a momma, a daddy, and a baby Chandler and Price press!





The big paper cutter moved to the other side of the space, adjacent to my cabinets where I store all of my paper. The husband redid the pegboard over the cabinets and installed some shelves to hold all of my envelopes. Above that is another shelf for empty boxes, packing peanuts, and other shipping supplies. Yesterday afternoon during Lachlan's nap I was able to start moving some stuff back in. Now I just need to find the time to organize it all!



On the far back wall, one of my wood type cabinets has been moved back inside. It will soon be joined by my two new metal type cabinets, just as soon as I get a chance to repaint them. It's supposed to be sunny tomorrow, so hopefully I'll have an update on that project soon! I'm in a hurry to get them back in place because there are lots and lots and lots of cases of type taking up valuable real estate over on the husband's side, and I've heard rumors that the rent on that space goes up on April 1...