As the title says…. Back when I was putting the major pieces of my office together, I had a problem and an idea. I also had some options. I have a cabinet that I removed from the apartment that I wasn’t sure whether I was going to paint and install it back in the apartment or what. The thought crossed my mind to put it back into my office.
Ultimately, I chose to do something different. I was going to build a sliding drawer that fit between the legs of the couch and under it. This drawer was on casters. I made measurements and did the quick woodwork to build this,
As I was taking out all of the items to install my sofa table, my son was preparing for a correspondence math course test. I left the drawer out while I took a break and he continued to work. As I was making breakfast, my wife said “Did you build that, it is amazing”, Of course, I had no idea what she was talking about because it was out of context.
At first. I thought it was my sofa table. I had been talking it up to her and I was proud of my work. But, she said no it was my drawer. I was a bit dumbfounded. I built this on a whim and it had been installed in office for months.
She said that I could sell these things. People would buy them for under the bed storage as an example. I had no idea. This was a solution to my problem, not necessarily a market problem. She said that I could have a booth at a flea market or something like that. And, her friends would like things like this.
I had no idea nor was this my intent. I suppose that is the way of the world. Entrepreneurs that are successful channel this accident into something successful. I myself haven’t done anything with this, nor do I know if I will. That being said, it doesn’t mean that I don’t recognize opportunity,
End Your Programming Routine: I would love to be my own boss, I just don’t know if this is the right place. Knowing what I want, riskier people might jump on this idea. I just know if this is the way to go. I suppose that keeping it slow, I can see where it goes. Let me know if you want one.
I was born in the mid-1970s. I do remember the gasoline shortage of 1979 vaguely. I remember asking my mom if the water could run out. My dad purchased a bicycle and started riding it to work everyday. He rode a bike to work and back from 1980-1983 (until we moved too far away). My mom rode a bicycle to the grocery store and around town.
Whether people realize it or not, our lifestyle revolves around fuel. One type of fuel is electricity. In my house that is the stove, the refrigerator, the freezer and the furnace. I would say that it is pretty important. A small amount of electricity can be stored in batteries and another small portion of electricity can be made with a generator but that doesn’t run without fuel.
We have all seen the Walking Dead where gasoline all runs out and the entire planet switches to ethanol. It’s a fun fantasy for sure but not really realistic on a large scale. Some preparedness minded people have made a huge investment in solar but this also assumes the outage is not caused by something like an Electro Magnetic Pulse. This is essentially a high level nuclear detonation that fries anything electrical. If you think that it is not possible, think about military escalation with Russia and a Chinese balloon that flew undiscovered along with who knows how many others.
I really don’t think that it is possible or practical to prepare for catastrophic events. What is smart is to deal with the typical, short term problems we see in everyday life. An ice storm knocks out power for a week or the government shuts down society for a month. You can’t leave or you don’t want to leave how is this going to work?
Can you actually stay home for two weeks? I know that examining what happened during the pandemic we didn’t. Sure, we had lots of food and we were fairly well prepared for survival. On the same hand, none of us knew what was going to happen so we went out in search of more while we could.
I remember standing in an hours long line at Costco on one of the first Saturdays of the lockdown. We waited for an hour and eventually decided that it wasn’t worth it. We ended up going to a scratch and ding kind of place called Wheeler Dealer because there were no lines. We got everything we wanted at scratch and dent kind of prices without the wait. It was mostly snacks and comfort foods, not something we stock a lot of. The truth is, we didn’t need to go out. It was a shortage fear that triggered us to react.
Leaving woulda/coulda/shoulda of that era behind, fuel is not much different the food. We may need to leave to get it, the prices are generally going up, it has a shelf-life, we can never have a lifetime supply at any one time and we use it daily. I am going to take the next couple of Thursdays talking about fuel storage, redundancy and alternative solutions.
End Your Programming Routine: This was going to be a single post but I couldn’t get my head around exactly what I wanted to say. There was too much and the topic was too broad and I wandered too much. I think I changed the title ten times before I settled on this one. Fuel is always something on my pantry list. It’s not sexy or fun but boy are you glad you have it when you need it.
If anything is constant, it is change. My routine is going to get more consistent in the next week. That is because my schedule is going to be predictable; Monday-Friday. It is going to be a little unique in that I will be working Central Time. But that is OK because I will be working 6AM-3PM, I have always preferred to start and finish early.
It also means that I will be shifting my writing time from the morning to the evening because I doubt that I am going to want to do too much that early in the morning. But, in the mean time, I am going to launch into another project. This project will be to build an office.
When I was last employed, I always worked at the dining table. I worked infrequently from home, it was the couple of snow days a year, the days when the car was in the shop or there was some kind of appointment mid-day and it didn’t make sense to do a lot of driving back and forth. My new job is 100% remote (for the foreseeable future) and everyone is home, it makes sense to have a dedicated space.
The location is less than ideal. It will be in my sometimes wet basement and is superseding the space that holds my fishing rods, firearms, shooting supplies, tackle boxes, frame packs etc. Which means that stuff needs to find a new home. On the bright side, I hope that I can make a podcasting setup, integrate some more secure storage and will be comfortable with heat and adequate lighting.
This is also a priority for me. It means that I am going to put dedicated effort and time into finishing it as soon as possible. Reading between the lines, it means that I am going to prioritize that work over writing for the duration of the project. My guess is that it is going to take at least a month to finish on nights and weekends.
Since this is ‘Tacticool’ Thursday, lets take a minute and fanaticize that I am building a “safe room” rather than an office. What attributes should I build into to make it happen? First what are the threats? In my area, the biggest threats are earthquake, flooding, fire.
Each threat might have different design considerations. Take fire, the best structure for fire would be one that doesn’t burn. Or for an earthquake, a wooden structure that can move but the framing elements are strapped so the parts don’t slide apart. Flooding would want to be sealed or at least have water management capability. So, from that standpoint, no one single structure is going to meet all of those requirements adequately.
But also in the room is going to be some supplies to wait out the emergency such as food, water, sanitation and entertainment. Depending on the duration of the event would be what to prepare for. My scenarios would range from a few minutes to several days.
I have always thought that if you were in the situation, you may need tools to get out of the safe room. Imagine that the house around you collapsed, you would want to escape from the place or at least be found, so some demolition tools and shut-off capability.
The Hollywood set would have you believe that this is the place to ride out the Zombie Apocolyse. This room would be hidden and fortified against outside threats. There are such things as ‘bullet proof’ panels (of fiberglass) or steel plates but they are heavy and expensive. You could add steel door frames with hidden doors. I think that in reality, those things are adding extra time until they are breached rather than so much as ‘proof’ anything.
Sometimes I see Youtube videos of fallout shelters and I watch because I am interested in seeing how problems are addressed. You can generate some power as long as you have fuel or you can have a bank of solar panels strung up somewhere. Many of them have some sort of charcoal air filter. My view is that you can probably survive some acute event, but sooner or later, the filters are going to fail. Charcoal is great at absorbing until it is full. Some sort of power source would be needed to refresh it. It would be impractical to live more than a couple weeks in that kind of setup.
So, I guess what I am saying is that everything is an act of compromises. The perfect structure for one scenario is largely imperfect for another. Building a structure for one type of scenario is potentially possible and could be successful. This office won’t be a saferoom, but if I lived in a tornado prone area, I do believe that having a place to go for that sort of thing would be on my list of wants.
January 9, 2005 was the move in date. We had gone through the home inspection and there were spaces under the house that were open dirt. The home inspector recommended covering with plastic to prevent unnecessary moisture in the house. In the back of my mind, I thought I could use that space for something useful besides wet, plastic covered mud hole. Fast forward eleven years; a new platform for an eventual washer and dryer.
A solid and level foundation makes the whole project much easier
Four wheelbarrow loads of dirt later, I was ready to start building.
After the ledger and vapor barrier
After the layout was done, it was time to bust out the hammer drill, level and chalk line.
Framing is complete
There were some compromises to make because the concrete was not square with about on inch of run out.
Ready for use
If you look real carefully, the subfloor does not line up with the joist. But it is plenty fine for its purpose. It wasn’t worth scribing the fit. To really prep for the washer and dryer, electrical, plumbing and venting will have to be done. For now, it gives good storage space.
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