For many years, I enjoyed and mostly took for granted having spaces where I could work on projects and get a little messy. Growing up, this was the garage of our house, out of which my high school friends and I ran our robotics team and where we built trebuchets and other class projects. In college, I was really spoiled: I could use the woodshop in our dorm basement, or the various makerspaces around campus, or my dorm room itself. And when we were living with housemates in Mountain View and Los Altos, I simply moved all my bike and car stuff into the garages of our rented houses.
Writing this post gave me a great excuse to dig up some old photos of these spaces. As I look at these photos, I find myself reflecting on how deeply building and tinkering is embedded in my history.
Some sleep-deprived teenagers wiring up a robot in my parents' driveway, November 2013More high school robotics, December 2013. It would get a little chilly on these winter evenings with the garage door open, and looking at this photo really takes me back to that feeling.Twiggothy the holiday tree, which Sharlene and I built together one very late night in the Simmons woodshop, December 2015Bike repair night in our summer sublet, Somerville, June 2017Austin and Sharlene disassembling bikes for shipping on one of our last nights in college, June 2019Our very messy Los Altos garage, February 2022
Anyways, when Sharlene and I moved to San Francisco a few years ago, and especially when we downsized to a smaller but sunnier apartment a year later, I sold many of my car tools and donated all my spare bike parts, optimistic that I could live a more minimalist life free from such excessive belongings. And this was true for a while!
But earlier this year, I found myself really wishing that I had a space for tinkering again. I had free time due to being on sabbatical, and I wanted to tune up my bikes, organize my tools, maybe set up a 3D printer and make stuff again.
It took me an embarassingly long few months to realize that the solution was under my nose the whole time. When we had initially moved into this building, our landlord had mentioned having some storage units available for rent, but we hadn't needed it then. After I remembered this, I emailed our landlord, and soon he was showing me a storage unit on the ground floor of our building. It was lit by a single lightbulb, measured a generous 14.5 by 6.5 feet, and was mine for just $50 a month.
Throughout the month of August, I worked on the storage unit, setting it up the way I liked. I really enjoyed this process and found it deeply rewarding to gradually bring my vision to fruition.
The first step was to set up a trash bin and bring in a broom and dustpan to sweep. Then, I hung up a brighter LED shop light. After that, I disassembled and rebuilt the shelves. I was very happy to find that I could split one of the shelf units in half to make a workbench.It took a few hours to clean, rebuild, and level the shelves (the floor is sloped towards the back of the space) but it was well worth it.After I got the shelves set up, I was able to start moving some boxes and things into the space. The big box with the "Fragile" sticker contains my new 3D printer. Here, I had just discovered I could use the wall shelf as an impromptu bike work stand.One challenge was setting up wi-fi in the space, since our apartment is three floors up and on the other side of the building. Fortunately, all the modems are located on the ground floor, so I just bought a small cheap router and installed it between the modem and the cable going upstairs. Then, I just had to switch our upstairs router to bridge mode.Another challenge was that there were no three-prong grounded outlets in the space, which I needed for the 3D printer. I did some investigation into ways to add a proper ground or run power from a grounded outlet elsewhere in the building, but eventually decided it wasn't practical and just settled for this GFCI adapter. It's not as good as a real earth ground but at least it's some protection.Here, the 3D printer has been unboxed and I've just hung up a Skadis pegboard. The print inside the printer is some version of my bidet remote mount. I really appreciate the unfinished wooden walls because I can easily put a few screws and nails into the walls without feeling like I'm overstepping as a renter.Starting to hang things up on the pegboard. Sharlene bought the False Knees print for me a few years ago.Getting pretty settled in now with more bikes. I bought the stool for $10 via Facebook Marketplace. The Peninsula Cycling poster is a cool design by David Towey.I printed this whole Skadis pegboard and hooks/trays/holders to organize my cycling charging cables and small accessories. All the pegboard parts as well as the clamp hook on the shelf are straight from Bambu Lab's MakerWorld. It's pretty neat how easy it is nowadays to find and print designs that others have made.More organization of the big pegboard. Almost all of the pegboard accessories here are 3D printed straight from MakerWorld, including the cool paper towel roll holder.Recently Sharlene and I bought this tandem bike, and it fits in here pretty nicely. It's nice to have space for random fun stuff like this.
I think the space is pretty comfortably set up now, and I've been using it a lot for 3D printing and working on bikes. I'm really glad to have it! It makes me feel a bit more like myself.
