Furniture building

Most of my projects are on hold until I get a place to work on them. My current lab is about 11′ x 12′, with a little storage room off to the side. It’s not big enough to store my tools and provide a useful workspace, so I’m improving it in two ways.

The first improvement is to cut down on stuff. I own a lot of things that I’m not using, and don’t even have any really clear plans to use, so I’m collecting all that junk and putting it in boxes. Some of it is going to friends who are worse hoarders have clearer plans for it than me. Anything that people don’t take is going to have a chance to get sold at the MIT Flea Market in April, and then is going to get thrown away. Once I’m done getting rid of stuff, I’m going to start tagging things when I use them, and get rid of the stuff that I don’t use for a year. I’m not going to be terribly strict about this, but I am going to give it a shot, and see how much of the stuff I actually want when it comes time to get rid of it.

The second improvement is to make a useful workspace. I used to have a large corner desk, which I used for all sorts of work. Since I didn’t have space for that in my current apartment, I got a smaller desk from a friend. It’s a cute desk, but it isn’t useful. The top has drawers that open over the desk area, so you can only get at the contents of the drawers if you don’t have anything on the desk. That doesn’t happen with desks I own. Aside from that, it’s too small to accommodate tools, a computer, and a project, and since many of my projects involve both a computer and tools, this is a problem.

To replace the useless desk, I’m building a new workbench. It’s a standing desk, with a 5’4″ x 3′ upper surface made of birch plywood. The underside will have some space for storage and my computer. Since the computer desk and the work desk will be consolidated into one workbench, I’ll be able to get rid of both my computer desk and my current workbench, and both the chairs in front of them, and the pads that protect the floors from the chairs. I’ll probably keep at least one of the chairs around, in case I need it in the future, but it won’t be in my lab.

The category of this entry “B Work” refers to work which is intended to accelerate the thing you really want to do, which is your “A work”. “C work” accelerates your acceleration, and so very little of it needs to be done in comparison to the other two.