Attic Renovations

As mentioned in my last post, the cedar strip kayaks we intend to build, will be built up in Hank’s attic.

It’s 80 feet long and it is in a 150 year old sail loft. Up till this point it has just been a storage space. Quite a bit of work needed to be done before it could be turned into a workshop to build kayaks in. 

(And I have to apologize for the mostly abysmal quality of the photos, which are pretty crummy even by my standards. With sunlight glaring through a window at each end, and crappy bulbs hanging from the beams, the results couldn’t be great given the camera I have. But it will give you an idea of what we’ve been doing.)

This is pretty much what the attic looked like from one end to the other. 150 year old planks on the floor, broken and missing in places, with a lattice work of odd sized pieces of plywood to cover them and a lifetime of accumulated stuff. This is the back portion looking towards the front.

After moving stuff from the front to the back, we hauled plywood up.

A good sense of what the floor looked like.

 Put up a wall along one side.

After laying down a new floor, the next task was hoisting all the tools into the attic.

We built a beam out the attic window. This is the way it’s done in our mutual homeland, and just a smarter way to get heavy loads up. The first load caused some creaking so we added more wood to the beam, and that worked fine.

Ratchet strap for tying around stuff.

One of several ridiculously heavy things to be hoisted up. In the process of removing the motor to make it a little more manageable. Damaged leg that will have to be fixed.

Several components removed from the table saw already, both to reduce the weight and also to make it small enough to  fit through the window. (The red gas tank was brought down from the attic to give to someone.)

All the stuff that was hauled up. Work bench, table saw, table planer, joiner, scroll saw, grinding wheel, tool chest - that one was a killer.

The hatch leading up and down.

Tool chest.

Work bench put back together.

Table saw put back together.

Strongback being built atop the work bench.

19 foot strongback with a stack of molds underneath it.

Another improvement was to rewire the attic and install better lighting and also to build a work table on casters. 

So in two weeks, we went from a dusty, dilapidated attic to a functional work space. 

I am stoked!

Go here for part 1 of the build.