Talons Garage - New Shop Build.

This is a thread I have wanted to announce, and wanted to start. We are moving! I want to start this thread as a blog of our progress in finding a new place, and getting it ready.

A little back story first. When we first moved into the current place we are the landlord was owner occupants in this business park. About 6 months after moving in they sold this property to an equity company. New management was different, but I really am not needy so I barely interacted with them. I just paid my rent and went about our day. Anyways, I emailed them about renewing our lease, and they the company basically wanted to strong arm us into a 5 year lease.... This place is already too small, but we are not quote ready to move into a bigger place yet, so that was not going to fly. Regardless, this search took us across the country as we looked at suitable places.

I have got to run, but I will try to update this as much as possible.

 

Congrats on the move! Hope it's gonna be a good one for you guys that will bring you more customers.

 

Update? I bought your cat shields. Outstanding product. Hope you found a new home.

 

Ok, a ton has happened since the first post. It is going to take a couple posts to catch up as I do not want to type it all out at once. It would probably take me hours.

Anyways after our landlord not wanting to work with us and ignoring my further inquiries about staying, I pretty much decided I needed to find a new home, and I was not willing to really rent another place.

Moving a shop like this is not cheap. We are talking probably 10k alone to move the heavy machinery, then easily another 30k+ in running appropriate power to each machine. The idea of dumping this much money into a place I was just renting again kind of sickened me. I know I have about 4 months to play with to figure out a home, so I started looking at all options.

I started contemplating moving the operation back to the shop at my house. This was more of a backup plan, but also an exercise in trying to figure out what do I need/want in a new shop. It is only 2400 square feet compared to my current shop that was 5000 sq feet. The current shop also had about 800sq feet of office, so floor space was around 4200 square feet. I could also probably move my home shop another 25’ back with the only problem being my water well being in the way. I also have three phase lines behind my house so I could drop a service to get the power I need. I was currently on a 400 amp three phase service, and probably did not have any more room to upgrade.

Looking at my current shop’s layout, I had a ton of wasted space. First, I moved machines into this shop as a bought them and grew the operation. Second, I didn’t really know how my operation was going to work. Third, the shop layout is just not ideal with the office in the way. I started to look at my current shop and try to visualize what I really need, and how I could layout my shop to be much more efficient. I made a few drawings, and I am going to share them in the next post as the wife just told me dinner is ready…