As I watch housing costs continue to skyrocket in many parts of the
country, I ask myself how does a HSMer find room for their
obsession..err, I mean their hobby.

Shops take up floor space...sometimes alot of it.

I would expect garage/storage/shop space are one of the first options
deleted when prices rise.

I would like to hear how HSMers are coping with the high price of real
estate.

Any hints or suggestions?

TMT

Too_Many_Tools wrote:
As I watch housing costs continue to skyrocket in many parts of the
country, I ask myself how does a HSMer find room for their
obsession..err, I mean their hobby.

Shops take up floor space...sometimes alot of it.

I would expect garage/storage/shop space are one of the first options
deleted when prices rise.

I would like to hear how HSMers are coping with the high price of real
estate.

Any hints or suggestions?

TMT


Well, buying a house in 1990 is a good start. Not advice that the
current house shopper can use, but that's what worked for me. Building
the shop was lot cheaper back then, too.

Gary Brady
Austin, TX

I use the garage for all my tools and park my car outside. Living in
Southern California helps...

With the mini-mill/small lathe/3-in-1 machines available from places
like Harbor Freight, you could set up a well-equiped shop in a space
the size of a walk in closet, so space isn't necessairily an issue. It
just depends on what you want to do.

I do all my blacksmithing outside, in the side yard. It helps to have
really cool neighbors.

Too_Many_Tools wrote:

As I watch housing costs continue to skyrocket in many parts of the
country, I ask myself how does a HSMer find room for their
obsession..err, I mean their hobby.

Shops take up floor space...sometimes alot of it.

I would expect garage/storage/shop space are one of the first options
deleted when prices rise.

I would like to hear how HSMers are coping with the high price of real
estate.

Any hints or suggestions?

TMT

Without even knowing what you mean by "HSMer" I'll suggest:

1. Live in the boonies. Once you've stepped up to a parcel that's
greater than one acre you can have a pretty big shop.

2. Build little stuff, with little machines.

3. Make it pay, then you can justify the extra expense.

4. Park the car outside; you can get a nice shop in that space.

5. And for the seriously urban, rent some workshop space in a
commercial/industrial district.

6. Even in urban areas there's still houses with large attached shops
-- you're not the only one who wants one. Buying new means building a
shop (but that's what basements are for, after all). Buying existing
housing means that if the former owner had a dynamite shop you get it,
and since big shops make houses hard to sell you _and_ the owner will be
happy with the transaction. Look around for a real estate agent who
understands shops and engage him/her as a buyer's agent. We're in a
house that we found with the help of a guy who grew up in ranching
country so he understands shops (my needs) and horses (my wife's). We
told him what we wanted and he found us the perfect house.

--

Tim Wescott
Wescott Design Services
http://www.wescottdesign.com

"Too_Many_Tools" wrote in message
oups.com...
As I watch housing costs continue to skyrocket in many parts of the
country, I ask myself how does a HSMer find room for their
obsession..err, I mean their hobby.

Shops take up floor space...sometimes alot of it.

I would expect garage/storage/shop space are one of the first options
deleted when prices rise.

I would like to hear how HSMers are coping with the high price of real
estate.

Any hints or suggestions?

TMT


Do you already own a house or are you renting?

How often do you move?

In considering a different place to live, what are your priorities? As an
example for some folks a short commute is a must, for others a place they
can keep horses is a big deal.

If your shop is important, is it important now, or can you get by in a small
garage if you had room to build a shop when circumstances changed?


--

Roger Shoaf

About the time I had mastered getting the toothpaste back in the tube, then
they come up with this striped stuff.

First of all, have you *thought* about your nickname lately? Maybe you have,
well, too many "things". Do you really use them all? Is it possible, just
possible, that you are a bit of a packrat? Maybe you need to learn to let some
stuff go. Big topic, and I'm the first to admit it has been a huge problem for
me and still is, but I've been working on it over 10 years now.

Second, it takes a long time. Start with a good paying job. Earn lots of money.
Then buy a house on a big lot with a big garage, and build an addition to it.
That's what I did. I live in a really expensive West Coast suburb of Seattle,
Washington. I see houses around me selling for like $1M, although I don't think
mine is worth that much. I bought in 1999, paid $295k, and put on another $140k
in remodel. My remodel added 25x20' to my shop space, which was already a big
two car garage. Now my shop is 45x20' and I still could use more room, but this
is all I'm gonna get, so when something big comes in, something big has to go
out. I've let go some really great machine tools and lots and lots of
maybe-useful metal, just to get the room back. Look at it this way: when each
square foot costs you $200, is it really worth it to store that big box of crapola?

GWE

Too_Many_Tools wrote:

As I watch housing costs continue to skyrocket in many parts of the
country, I ask myself how does a HSMer find room for their
obsession..err, I mean their hobby.

Shops take up floor space...sometimes alot of it.

I would expect garage/storage/shop space are one of the first options
deleted when prices rise.

I would like to hear how HSMers are coping with the high price of real
estate.

Any hints or suggestions?

TMT

In article , Grant Erwin says...

... Look at it this way: when each
square foot costs you $200, is it really worth it to store that big box of
crapola?

Or, another view: compare the storage 'costs' for the crap-o-la, for
the amount of time you will be tripping over it till it's useful, with
the cost of simply purchasing *exactly* what you need, when you
need it.

There's some junk I do store - but only stuff I know will be a lot
more costly to purchase later on in the future. Mostly unobtainium
motorcycle parts.

Jim


--
==================================================
please reply to:
JRR(zero) at pkmfgvm4 (dot) vnet (dot) ibm (dot) com
==================================================

I was talking about putting together a large collection of fasteners once, with
a good friend. He gave me some pithy advice: "Let the store store the nuts and
bolts!"

GWE

jim rozen wrote:

In article , Grant Erwin says...


... Look at it this way: when each
square foot costs you $200, is it really worth it to store that big box of
crapola?


Or, another view: compare the storage 'costs' for the crap-o-la, for
the amount of time you will be tripping over it till it's useful, with
the cost of simply purchasing *exactly* what you need, when you
need it.

There's some junk I do store - but only stuff I know will be a lot
more costly to purchase later on in the future. Mostly unobtainium
motorcycle parts.

Jim

"Grant Erwin" wrote in message
...
First of all, have you *thought* about your nickname lately? Maybe you
have, well, too many "things". Do you really use them all? Is it possible,
just possible, that you are a bit of a packrat? Maybe you need to learn to
let some stuff go. Big topic, and I'm the first to admit it has been a
huge problem for me and still is, but I've been working on it over 10
years now.
snip

If you're still working on it after 10 years, it sounds like you should be
working a little harder g.

I have way too many small things in storage, either for tools I no longer
own or things that I don't really need or use. Part of the problem is that
prices on a lot of it seems to have dropped and won't bring anywhere near
what I paid for it.

Mike

Grant Erwin writes:

I was talking about putting together a large collection of fasteners
once, with a good friend. He gave me some pithy advice: "Let the store
store the nuts and bolts!"

I keep some fasteners, and toss others. It depends on how likely I am to
use them, whether they're stocked locally (ie, how much of a hassle it
was to buy them in the first place), and if I have to buy them by
the hundred. The same thought process applies to any raw material.

I've also found that it's worth the effort to sort the "keepers", so I
don't have to dig through a random pile of stuff to find something that
may or may not be there-- I can see right away if I have what I'm
looking for or not.

My dad is a "pure" packrat-- he keeps stuff just to keep it. I'm a more
focused packrat-- I keep stuff if I can imagine a use for it, but if it
looks like I'll never get around to using it, then I toss it (or sell it
on ebay, so someone else gets a chance to use it). There is a risk that
I'll guess wrong, but it generates space for other stuff that I know
I'll have a use for. This increases the ratio of real projects vs
theoretical projects.

As someone else mentioned, it might be different if I had more space.

Gary Brady writes:

Well, buying a house in 1990 is a good start. Not advice that the
current house shopper can use, but that's what worked for me.

For current shoppers, wait until the bubble is over.

I just heard an interview with a real estate agent who said people are
afraid the bubble will last forever, and if they don't buy an overpriced
house now, they'll never be able to afford one.

That might be true in certain high-demand areas, but it's unlikely to be
true in general. In particular, a lot of housing is now owned by
investors. If the market shifts and they all decide to sell, prices could
go down fast.

5 acres in the mountains of CO --- bought 10 years ago -- really helps for
room to store "stuff".

Also extemely blessed to own my own small business (that sometimes uses real
machines tools) and pays for most of my "toys"....

Steve


"Too_Many_Tools" wrote in message
oups.com...
As I watch housing costs continue to skyrocket in many parts of the
country, I ask myself how does a HSMer find room for their
obsession..err, I mean their hobby.

Shops take up floor space...sometimes alot of it.

I would expect garage/storage/shop space are one of the first options
deleted when prices rise.

I would like to hear how HSMers are coping with the high price of real
estate.

Any hints or suggestions?

TMT

If you're asking how to afford a place with a lot of room, I can't help
you there. As another poster said, buy a place ten years ago... If
you're asking how to function in a small space, I think it helps if one
enjoys puzzles.

I live in San Francisco in a house with a garage designed to house a
Model T - it's 11' x 17'. In it I have a mill, an 11" X 40" lathe, a
TIG welder, a drill press, two roll away tool cabinets, grinders, a
buffer, a belt/disc sander, a compressor, a fair amount of tooling for
the machine tools, a band saw, a welding bench, a work bench, and all
sorts of doo-dads and thing-a-ma-bobs. Plus the latest (small) project
car. I can walk around and function quite well in it. A couple of
tactics I use:

Store stuff high. I snagged our old kitchen cabinets when we remodeled
and mounted them all in the garage so that the bottoms are a couple of
inches above my head. They make a convenient place to mount lights,
too. I've built a number of high shelves on the walls that the
cabinets don't inhabit which are filled with storage containers. I've
got some things hung from the ceiling (I'm lucky that my garage has a
high roof).

Attach stuff to the walls so that floor space is preserved. My
grinder, buffer, sander and drill press are all mounted to the wall or
on shelves I made especially to hold them. This allows me to use the
floor underneath them. I've got hooks and/or shallow shelves on every
square inch of wall.

Put things on wheels. Both tool cabs, the band saw, and the car are on
casters. Rearranging floor space is easier that way.

Make things that combine functions. My welding table folds down almost
flat against the wall and serves as a dust cover for the welder when
I'm not using it. My drill press "shelf" serves as a cover for my
compressor and as a place to store floow jacks and jack stands.
Although it normally stays down, my work bench can be folded up against
the wall if I need to fit a long car in the garage.

Steal space from other areas. My bead blaster and press are in a
corner in the basement.

It helps if one enjoys puzzles. I swear I get almost as much enjoyment
out of figuring out how to get all this stuff in my shop so that it's
useable, as I get in building stuff.

If someone wants a shop, it can be done in a small space. A couple of
folks on this NG have a shop in the space of a large closet. One just
has to work to use whatever nooks and crannies are available.

Peter

Too_Many_Tools wrote:
As I watch housing costs continue to skyrocket in many parts of the
country, I ask myself how does a HSMer find room for their
obsession..err, I mean their hobby.

Shops take up floor space...sometimes alot of it.

I would expect garage/storage/shop space are one of the first options
deleted when prices rise.

I would like to hear how HSMers are coping with the high price of real
estate.

Any hints or suggestions?
Well, there's a guy here who bought an old mill/shop, whatever.
It is about 120 to 150 feet deep, but the frontage of the thing isn't
a whole lot bigger than a double storefront. He has two power
feeds, a conventional 120/240 single phase, and a corner-grounded
230 V three-phase feed. It has a clerestory mill-type section
on the back, which gives incredible free lighting during the day.
The front is two story, with an office section on top, and
a drive-in shop on the street level. He's been rehabbing the
upstairs, that was in nearly the abandoned building sort of
condition. The lower level is a machine shop/wood shop and
a storage area for a bunch of guys who are endlessly trading
odd machine tools around. (I bought a Peck, Stowe and Wilcox
shear from one of those guys, and my old Atlas/Craftsman 12"
lathe is now there, after I sold it to another of them.)

Jack, the owner of the building, has several mills, a few
lathes, some of them quite massive (American Pacemaker or
Monarch, I think), some woodworking tools, and a great
foundry. So far, he has only done aluminum, I think he's
going to have to tweak the furnace a bit if he wants go
go hotter, but he can do 20 - 30 Lbs of aluminum in one
pour. He has a complete setup for sand casting.

I don't know what he paid for the thing, but I gather it
was about 100 K. It looked like HELL when he first moved in
there, and I can't imagine anybody moving a family in to
a place in that condition. Jack was newly single at the time,
but he has remarried. She must be a really tolerant person!

Jon

wrote in message
oups.com...
If you're asking how to afford a place with a lot of room, I can't help
you there. As another poster said, buy a place ten years ago...


A lot depends on how old you are. I started buying (and holding)
properties at 29. I usually lived in them for a while, fixed them up, and
then moved up. I alway kept them as rentals. Often I would buy them on a
land sales contract to avoid the banks. Today (at 60 plus) the rentals
support me, and I have what some would consider a pretty good shop. Of
course, it took 30 years to do it.

A few rules:

Don't buy premium properties... you're paying the other guy's profit.

If it needs fixing, bargain down like crazy... you can get it lower than
you think.

Buy on the city's outskirts.... the city will come to you.

The shop is the most important building... you can live anywhere (as long
as you can get by the SWMBO... see Harold)

Have fun. Life is short.

Mark

Let the record show that (Ron Bean) wrote back on Fri,
19 Aug 2005 22:09:46 -0000 in rec.crafts.metalworking :

Gary Brady writes:

Well, buying a house in 1990 is a good start. Not advice that the
current house shopper can use, but that's what worked for me.

For current shoppers, wait until the bubble is over.

I just heard an interview with a real estate agent who said people are
afraid the bubble will last forever, and if they don't buy an overpriced
house now, they'll never be able to afford one.

That might be true in certain high-demand areas, but it's unlikely to be
true in general. In particular, a lot of housing is now owned by
investors. If the market shifts and they all decide to sell, prices could
go down fast.

When America is talking the Stock Market, buy Real Estate.
When America is talking Real Estate, buy stocks.
Richard Karlgaad, publisher of Forbes magazine,
July 25, 2005


"But what are we going to do tonight?"


tschus
pyotr




--
pyotr filipivich.
as an explaination for the decline in the US's tech edge, James
Niccol wrote "It used to be that the USA was pretty good at
producing stuff teenaged boys could lose a finger or two playing with."