My shop

When we bought our house back in 2012, one of the biggest selling points was a basement workshop that the previous owners had installed. The husband/father was a tinkerer, according to his daughter, and there’s evidence of that scattered throughout the house in little ways: different types of screws holding on light fixtures, innovative shortcuts when it comes to things that were repaired, duct tape holding together random pipes. I’ll alternatively curse and marvel at this now that I’m the one doing my own work to fix or upgrade things.

I’ve put this workshop to use in the time that we’ve owned the house. I’ve built several costumes here, and worked on a bunch of other projects for the house. It’s got a fantastic work surface, plenty of outlets, and a lot of storage space that I’ve squirreled away parts and tools into. It’s become a bit of an organic mess, and one of my projects this year (along with the rest of the basement) is to give the walls a coat of paint to make it not quite so dark and cave-like.

I’ve been spring cleaning, and finally gone through and done a periodic cleanup down there. Basic stuff: putting the tools back into place, cleaning up a random pile of cat barf, swept up plastic and ceramic bits off the floor, restacked armor bins, and so forth. I’m in project mode right now, so I’m also taking stock of what projects I’ve got in the works.

I also need to set up some sort of shelving system for the various suits of armor that I’ve accumulated. It’s not entirely practical to mount them on mannequins when they’re not in use — it takes a long time to get them on and off. I also need to figure out some sort of gun rack for the various prop guns that I’ve accumulated over the years (E-11, E-22, DC-15, 2 DC-15Ss., and the ongoing ChemRail project), as well as helmets (X-Wing pilot, 3 Stormtroopers, Shoretrooper, First Order Stormtrooper, 212th and regular Clone, and a random Halo ODST bucket I forgot about.)

Another project(s) to add to the list of things to do this year.