More Garage Organization

I did some more garage organization over the last week. The previous owner left these old beat-up particle board cabinets+countertop. They're gross and take up too much space.

Before

After taking them off: 

Used concrete patch to fill about 20 holes.

I listed the cabinets for free on FB marketplace, and someone came and got them the next day. I love FB marketplace and craigslist...people haul away the junk you don't want anymore and sometimes give you money for it. Like this ancient snap-on torque wrench I found under one of the cabinets: 

It's cool, and I was tempted to keep it, but it's almost certainly out of calibration and I'd never use it. Got $20 for it, though. Next, painting:

Flat white like the rest of the walls I painted.

Only one little patch of not-white remains, and it's behind/around the water heater, which I can't get to easily. Then it was on to building a shelf unit, moving another, and filling them up. 

All the rocket stuff is one place now, which is nice. I added a shelf bracket (upper right) to support the really long stuff. The tooling cabinet has a home now, though I still need to clean and repaint it. 

That's it for now, plenty more to do. Next up is the bike rack, which will go where one of those shelving units was. 

House Work

Haven't had many posts recently, been busy working on the house.

• painted everything but the basement
• replaced a pump and replumbed the hot tub
• replaced almost every light fixture. Just the foyer chandelier and bathroom lights left to go.
• replaced a bunch of switches
• tons of organization stuff. bought a steel full-wall book shelf for all our books
• garage (see other posts)
• etc...it's never ending

Some fun stuff though, like the space wall:

I found high resolution images of all of the top posters and had them printed at CVS: good mix of US space and Soviet space propaganda. Already had most of the ones in the middle. Walmart sells glass front poster frames for ~$5, can't beat that.

The aquarium on the right will eventually be a display case for the H1 rocket engine turbine sitting next to it on the floor, and the H1 engine pocket technical manual I just won an auction for. The turbine is too heavy for me to lift up and into the display...might be a good justification for buying an engine hoist, haha. I'll eventually CNC-route (need to build that first...) a polycarbonate stand for it to sit on inside the display case. I went with an aquarium because most display cases I found couldn't support the weight of the turbine, but 40 gallons (size of that aquarium) of water is over 300lbs, and the turbine definitely doesn't weigh that much. Used aquariums are also really cheap on craigslist/fb marketplace. Tip: if you have something really heavy you want to display in a case: buy an aquarium to do it. 

Refurbishing an Antique Metal Workbench: Part 2

 Finally got around to finishing the workbench. I sanded the rough paint and added another coat, and two coats where I hadn't painted previously. Still didn't come out perfect, would really need a paint booth for that, not a tarp on my drive way, but it's good enough. I started re-assembly after the paint dried using new hardware. I heavily greased the drawer slides to prevent them from rusting and make drawer action smoother. 

Next, epoxy top. I did a seal coat first:

Then I mixed up a huge batch with a small jar of white pigment in it. The pigment wasn't strong enough, so it was still somewhat translucent. 

Lots of drips. 

I used an oscillating saw and sander to cut the drips off. I hate how much epoxy the drip-off method wastes. Next time I do this, I'll make edge molds. 

Mini-lathe has a home now!

Decided not to print rubber feet for it. I might build a plywood platform for it later if the mini-lathe feels too low. 

Total time invested: ~32 hours

Total cost: ~$250

Other stuff:

Still cleaning and organizing my garage. I'm designing a workbench, and I'm planning to rip out the crappy cabinets soon that the previous owner left. I finally ran electricity to my 3D printer shelf and got the old printer running again...printed nonstop for about a week to catch up on the backlog. I'll get around to assembling CubeXY eventually.