We all love a freebie

My workshop has been a huge source of excitement for me because it means that I can now build all those wonderful projects on the  'Ana White' website that I've drooled over for months but lacked the real space to be able to get started. Space is no problem now though and with everything pretty much sorted and put away I'm ready to start hammering and drilling.

But first........

One of my daughters works at a local department store and I've been the lucky recipient of plants and hardware that was destined for the tip - all free of charge. The latest exciting load included plastic crates full of tester pots of paint, mainly Crown but also Laura Asley and Farrow and Ball. Luckily my daughter was also renewing her bedroom furniture at the time so I inherited an old (well not that old really) chest of drawers that was the perfect size for all these pots of paint. The drawers are a cheap Argos make so I had to reinforce the bottoms etc first but lookit

 3drawers full of Crown tester pots.

1 drawer full of Dulux tester pots

Loads more tester pots waiting to be sorted and hung.

I am going to have a field day making colourful bird houses this year. While emulsion paint cannot survive outside alone, coat it in outdoor varnish and it's good to go.

While we're talking freebies, look what else my daughter got, though she did have to pay £1 for each case this time - a saving of around £98 so well worth it. She got 2 for me and 2 for my husband and these could not have come at a better time because I was close to buying a set of 'Drillall' drillbits from a shopping channel despite dubious reviews online. 

I must also show you the handle to the door of my workshop. I couldn't find a proper pull down handle in any of my tool boxes nor Mr CH's toolkits but I'm way too tight to consider buying one at ridiculous prices or waiting 3 weeks for delivery from online shopping - I want what I want when I want it! Nosing around Mr CH's now 1/4 smaller workshop (due to my moving in ;) ) I found an old bricklaying trowel - least I hope it's old and figured it would make a cute door handle

New workshop part 1

My workshop is really starting to take shape now and I'm so excited that I will soon be able to start all my home and garden projects in a space that is of a decent size to move around in - no more shuffling around in a 7x12 shed with small worktops that meant I couldn't build anything bigger than a bird house and had to wait until summer so I could build outside - a complete waste of winter months when I would actually have the time to build and create things.

The new workshop is actually a quarter of my husbands existing workshop (it took me months to convince him to section me the end off) and measures just over 20ftx20ft, a huge improvement not only in actual space but worktops also. Not only has MrCH made me a worktop covering 2 lengths of the walls but I also have a concrete slab area for tall work (the rest of the floor is gravel unfortunately but I'm not complaining - yet) and he even made me a work station that I could access from all sides by boarding out the top of his pool table.
It's not finished yet, I'm moved in and all my tools etc are in there but it's a mess as I try to organise stuff and work out where stuff is going. I'm not one to buy in loads of new wood in order to make lovely fancy racking and matching tool racks so everything I make is made from either old wood or pallet wood, it doesn't look posh or fancy but it does the job.

This is what I started with, 20x20 of hubbys shed. It needed insulating, boarding out and something fixing to the ceiling because the steel sheets tend to condensate in the winter and who needs to be dripped on all day!

More views of where we started. The pool table barely got used but is amazingly heavy so hubby agreed to let me make use of it as a walk around work table. We moved it slightly to the far end so that I could also make use of the concrete slab it sits on.

Insulation is in and we've begun boarding the walls out. The windows look squiffy in these pictures but they're really not, a spirit level was used throughout and the sloping roof give it an optical illusion. In fact I'm quite proud of those windows because I put them in and fixed them myself!
The door is an old one we've had sitting here for years and is now in the opening you see to the right.

These are the views I'm going to have to put up with while I'm working away in there, it's hard but someone has to do it.

Next time I'll post its current progress and the weird and wonderful projects I've made for door handles and shelving etc.

Workshop plans

I'm currently without a work shop or any kind of working space which is why I haven't been able to blog about completed projects - insert sad face here.
Mr CH is going to be starting on my new workshop any time now and it's going to be amazing - insert happy, happy face here.
The best bit right now is planning how it is going to look, what colour I'm painting it and of course what organisation I can come up with for all my tools - exciting!
We're pretty much dictated to by the area of land we're building it on for its shape but the rest is all down to me. I had thought of doing some kind of Red on the outside as I really like this shed I've pinned on Pinterest

However I think I may regret it afterwards so I looked into the 'Cuprinol' garden paints colour chart and although I don't like painting anything Green I think I may be doing it in Seagrass

Daniel corner log cabin

Of course it's going to need its own sign and I love this Potting shed sign so will probably do something similar but change the wording

The really exciting stuff though will be on the inside. I'm currently pinning every picture on storage that I can but there are some really cool ideas that I know I'm definitely going to have to include:
Isn't this just a brilliant idea! I love how it uses ceiling spacefor storage - though if my ceilings aren't high enough for such deep boxes I will have to adapt it.

 This would be brilliant underneath a main work bench - my work bench gets crowded with every size nail and screw as I rummage through looking for the right size and I'm a lazy worker so things never get put away until the projects finished - this will keep my workspace clear.

All my Router bits are in their own lovely wooden cases but they have to be opened to see what each one is so this will make choosing much much easier and I'll attach the picture of each bit to the front of each shelf too.

My drill has been knocked over more times than I care to remember so this will put a stop to that and will also keep those tiny adapters all in the same place too.

This is a must for my workshop. I have some very heavy clamps and too many times I have knocked them and had them hit a shin or land on my feet.

So there we have it, my reason for not posting much at the moment and the plans that are afoot to rectify it. Until I can build again I will continue to post with other projects that are on the go - usually indoor ones and/or garden ones that can be built outside.