It’s been… *looks back at the last post from this project*… a bit over 7 years since finishing up the shed and lately I’ve been thinking about how it’s long overdue a bit of a reset. Having this finished throughout the pandemic was a massive boon, and it’s seen heavy use almost continually for work, hobby, storage, gardening and DIY. But it’s probably inevitable with any project like this that you don’t quite end up using it how you imagined, and thats certainly the case here. Couple that with many years of general wear and tear, the accumulation of stuff and a carefree approach to storage, and the opportunities for improvement are reaching a sort of critical mass.
Let’s take a snoop and see what we can see…
The Back Wall
As we enter the door, the first thing we’re confronted with is the back (west) wall. This originally served as storage for a folding sawhorse that has since been moved further outside to the bike shed. It’s also where I occasionally (very occasionally) paint artwork, which the paint streaks down the wall (and paint splattered floor, out of sight) attest to.
As my thought bubbles make clear, this wall needs clearing and repainting. I’ve had a random carrier bag for rubbish somewhere in the shed for seven years, and there’s no excuse for the range of stuff dumped under the desk – the part of the desk that is supposed to be my hobby area.
I massively regret not putting any electrical outlets on the left (south) wall. I’m just debating whether the answer is trunking the extension lead in across the ceiling, or actually chasing cables into the wall and having a proper outlet over there.
And, as I look at this image now, it occurs to me that continuing the highest shelf on the left, running across the entire width of the back wall could be a good idea from a storage perspective.
The Hobby Desk
Turning to the right and the desk, we have two distinct zones – the hobby area and the computer area. Let’s look at the hobby area first.
The issues fall into three areas – having a bit of a clearout, making better use of the storage space I have here, and some key functional improvements. The first of these is rethinking the magnetic tool bars and the deadspace they create under the shelf. The second is how I make my hobby project work more portable.
I currently use a dinner tray as a means to pick up my hobby projects and take them indoors – essential when it’s either the height of summer or winter, or I feel like being more sociable. As you can imagine, a dinner tray is not terribly good as a hobby desk, and what I imagine instead is some sort of purpose built desktop hobby area – potentially inlaid into the desk surface so it’s flush when in situ – but with carry handles that I can use to pick up the entire desktop wholesale and either put on my lap or the dining table.
Here’s a close up under the desk… as stated above it’s a bit of a dumping ground, and has a subwoofer that hasn’t worked for ages. This all makes it rather uncomfortable to sit in comfort and work on my models.
The Computer Desk
We move along north wall to the computer desk. By far the most annoying thing here is cable management. The desk was designed for a world where most of our laptop ports were on the right and used VGA. HDMI here is an after thought, so isn’t neatly run behind the shelf. And for whatever reason, laptop manufacturers have switched their power and display ports to the left. This means cables run right up to the grommet under the desk, then back across to the left. In short, the grommet needs to be on the left.
I’d like to get a bigger monitor, wall mounted with some sort of decent integrated speakers or a slimline soundbar to replace the broken speakers – that would neaten the place up and make working here pretty great.
I didn’t pin point this in the image, but that circular metal thing to the left of the laptop is a pop up power bank. This has almost never been used for it’s intended purpose. Instead, tonnes of things are plugged into it underneath, which prevents anyone from popping it up! It’s also just generally in the way when popped up.
I might get rid of the anglepoise, as have almost never used it – the overhead light is good in the shed, and I’m no pro painter anyway. Besides this, a bit of a cabinet refresh to pinpoint some other stuff from my collection could be nice.
The Hobby Drawers
Separating the two parts of the desk is a small drawer unit. Working bottom up, we start with some of the most egregiously wasted storage in the whole shed. The bottom drawer is full of scenic materials for scenery making. Great stuff, but infrequently used. The one up is worse still, with the only useful thing in here being a box of bases for models. That black case in the way is for a rotary tool, and I should of got rid of the case years ago.
Moving up, this is a great drawer, full of useful stuff for building and converting models. It’s just become a bit messy and I have the distinct feeling there are some really useful things I’ve forgotten about in the shadowy and hard to reach area at the back. This just needs tidying and probably some of the stuff from it can be moved into the lower drawers once they’re vacated.
Top drawers are similarly well designed. I’ll do a good cleanout of my paints – who doesn’t like auditing their paints, picking out the crust from the lids and remixing any that have dried out with some acrylic medium?
Maybe I’ll swap the paints and special effects and basing materials around just for the hell of it.
The Workbench
Moving to the south wall there’s the workbench above to large cupboards and a set of drawers, a couple of shelves and another wall mounted cupboard.
Starting off with the workbench itself, which is used for small DIY work and terrain building. Its actually made out of a door, and on top I’ve laid a sheet of MDF as a sacrificial surface. This needs replacing, or flipping, as it’s got rather messy by now.
The main thing here though is to get rid of or move a bunch of stuff into the attic or some less used areas of the shed, to free up space for whatever the current project is (here, making my modular trench battlefield) I’ll also need to rethink the tool storage here, as it’s got a bit overcrowded.
Cupboards
The cupboards under the bench. In this one there are various boxes and I don’t fully know what’s in them anymore. In principle, they’re good for lesser used items, but I think it will be a case of downsizing what I’m storing (a common theme) and make better use of the space that’s there. For example, the racks inside the door here should contain things I need to access a lot, like glue and primer, not things I almost never use like engine degreaser and wood oil.
I didn’t photograph the second under-bench cupboard but it suffers from much the same problems as the one above. It has a bunch of empty miniature storage and a load of old house paint and gardening stuff, and instead of shelves inside the door, some hanging BBQ tools that rattle annoyingly (and could rather easily be stored inside the BBQ itself).
I think I want to put a proper bin inside one of these cupboard doors, making the shelf less deep to accommodate it. Then do a good sort out of the contents – about half of this could surely be thrown out or moved to the attic, with the remainder properly labelled for ease. Finally I think there must be something in having some sort of pull out solution within the cupboards themselves to make the contents a bit more accessible.
The Top Cupboard
We finish at the top cupboard above the workbench. It’s the most easily accessible cupboard with the contents at eye level, so its the most useful one. It’s currently a combination of a useful tool wall and some rather disorganised storage. As the most easily accessed cupboard, it’s just become the worst dumping ground of all.
I think this could be better used as somewhat of a working storage area – instead of long term storage, it would contain parts and materials for whatever current terrain or DIY project I’m working on, keeping them neatly stored away until ready for their final home, and also able to dry without disturbance during glue ups, resin pours etc. A lot of stuff is going to need to find a new home, though.