T' Orc's Workshop, an update....

      Well it has been two days without work but to be honest my shoulder was glad of the rest, not that I have been idle mind. I may have mentioned previously that, due to my enforced vacation, I am now about as poor as an extremely destitute church mouse that has been mugged by a band of particularly nasty weasels on his way to the local soup kitchens. The intermittent work is due, in part, to my slow recovery but also to trying to organise my clients requirements and trying to get my workload to mesh together. Things are coming together slowly and the work is increasing at a steady rate, thank the Northern Gods. To supplement our extremely small reserve of money I have been slowly sifting through the Orc's Workshop's treasure trove bloody mess with the duel intention of clearing the mess that is filling it to bursting point, and also to hopefully earn a few pennies in the process.

    Deciding what to sell or just bin is always a struggle for myself and, as I have mentioned in posts past, I am your typical man who works with his hands and everything within the Orc's Workshop will may come in useful..........well one day it may. Having said this, as heart wrenching it has been, progress has indeed been made. The list of items no longer hiding within the workshop is as follows:-

• Three cylinder lawnmowers that one day, aka never in a month of sundays, were to be stripped and restored. These were sold on Facebook for the princely sum of £20.00 for all three. 
• A gardeners kneeling pad - £5.00 on Facebook
• A set of bicycle rear panniers - £10.00 on Facebook
• A small bench top tool box - £10.00 on Facebook
• Small writing desk - £20.00 on Facebook
• Filing Cabinet - £10.00 on Facebook
• Bronze cast whippet (from the house in the rock) - £100.00 on Ebay
• Also a full van load of what I sadly deemed as unworthy of selling (rubbish to the heathens amongst you) has been taken to the local recycling centre.

     Now I know that tis not a king's ransom but nevertheless tis a more than welcome extra bit of income with the promise of more to come. Not only are the family coffers looking ever so slightly better but there is now more room within the workshop, which makes things in there far easier to organise. There are two lawnmowers within the workshop that I now have room to work on and hopefully these will both be finished and ready for sale within the next fortnight, and hopefully for a tad more than the £20.00 that was received for the three, basically knackered, cylinder mowers.

     I now also have some room to be able to assess the 'framework' of the garage i.e. shelving, benches, power points, lighting etc. First to do upon this list is this shelf that is positioned above what is to be my general workbench...

     ....as can be seen it is far from level due to the metal shelf brackets that I originally fitted a couple of years ago being not strong enough to bear any weight more than a small bag of sparrow's feathers. Being that purchasing materials is at the moment not an option I have dug out some scrap wooden planks and have decided to fashion some sturdy brackets out of them....

     ...perhaps not the most conventional of shelf supports and the one pictured is only halfway built but you perhaps can see the general idea. These will also have a second purpose, as well supporting the shelf they will house some speakers for a multi disc CD player that once resided in a car of mine many years ago. They may not be pretty at the moment but I think that they will be quite splendid once they are holding up my shelf and pumping out some banging tunes. Also, once this shelf is sturdy enough to support the Bismarck it will free up more space as it will be the storage for a considerable array of consumable items that are just taking up room in various parts of the workshop. So as one job is completed it is freeing up space in the workshop allowing more sorting to be done. More importantly though, this process is giving myself more headspace and I am beginning at long last to be able to picture the finished workshop, even though this is still some time off. I am finding the whole process of clearing, organising and now being able to at long last use at least a small part of my workshop very cathartic and would heartily recommend the process to anyone who's workshop, house or even garden seems just too damned messy to tackle. It takes patience and tackling it in bite sized pieces and not trying to do it all in one fell swoop. You may not be able to see the wood for the trees immediately but if you just stick at it for awhile then all of a sudden the task becomes so much easier and the benefit of clearing such overrun spaces is that it helps clear the clutter within your head.

     Well that is it for this post, I hope that you and yours are in the finest of fettles, so until the next time..

John t' Gardener