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Wednesday, March 7

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My "bike room... "

Something I've had in some shape or form since mebbe 1998.  A spot in the garage, an extra bedroom, a random room with no other real purpose, and at our last place, the huge den-like room downstairs in the split level rental house.  It was much bigger than I needed or wanted.  Space that money was spent on to keep it air conditioned/heated for all the hours of the days that I was never in there.

Frustrating for someone like me.  I'm not cheap, but I hate waste.  I will eat hotel hallway food.  Will and have (and will again).

So squashing our lives down from 2,080 sq ft to 1,128 sq ft was one way to achieve our collective goal of living smaller.  We knew it wouldn't be easy, as living larger than we ever planned allowed us to accumulate "stuff."  All kinda "stuff."

The initial plan was to convert our screened-in porch into a bike room by closing it all in and installing a real door.

Photo taken right after we moved in, "stuff" tossed asunder with nowhere else to really go.

There were some delays with moving on the porch project, and I had time to scratch my head (and ass), look at walls and piles of things and measure stuff and surf the internet for solutions.  Somehow, it all came together in my head, and the ten pounds of shit might just fit into the five pound bag after all.

A place to work on my bikes was most important.  I'm tired of all the digging around in bins stored in different rooms (or the shed or the crawlspace/murder room) looking for tools and parts.  I started there first.

There but for the grace of dog, my pegboard fit right here (in the room behind the kitchen).

I realized I don't need speedy access to my threaded headset wrench AND my square taper caged bearing bottom bracket fixed cup wrench.  If I stacked them on one hook and did the same same with other seldom used tools, I could free up a lot of space.


I now have more room than I need, which is pretty sweet.  I'm prepared for when the next standard comes along.

I also added a few pieces of wood from the pallet I saved when they reattached the front of my old tree-hating house to make a light duty shelf where there once was none.

We wanted the home computer out of The Pie's home office so that she could foster puppers and kittehs without the temptation of dangling wires (her office set up is hella tight already).  Also, the ability of a family member to use the home PC without having small animals crawling all over them is buenos.

But where to put it?

I found an IKEA hack site that took the MICKE desk and converted it to an old person-style keyboard tray desk.  I was fortunate that where I hung the Stickel on the Topeak SOLO rack left enough space for the ugly metal shelves that are probably older than me (srsly) and they're just wide enough to accommodate the desk with the monitor squeezing in just below the back tire of the bike hanging overhead.

Seriously, it's all a half inch or so from not working in way too many ways to understand with my thinky part.

Yeth, IKEA may not make the nicest furniture, but it certainly filled a need (and I didn't have to create my own desk-like structure).

Yeth, there is a lot of shit back there behind the bike. 

Shit I don't need all that often.  This is part of living small.  Sometimes you gotta move something to get to something else.  Soooooo inconvenient.  FML.

I'm not a true audiophile, but one nice thing back here is the acoustics.  The bass have never been so well turboded ever before this moment.

Praise be, Demo Jesus.

As far as the screened-in porch, it remains mostly the same.


We can just hang out there, and it now serves as proof that I signed up for many events and at the very least, showed up for packet pickup.  Also that I did better than just okay at a few of them.  I'm super stoked because now that we decided to just use it like a normal porch, I installed a functional screen door handle, so I have sort of a dog-proof airlock to make it easier to get in and out of the house. 

My front porch steps are a bitch compared to just riding the walkway up to the side of my house.

My air compressor now lives in the laundry room that's out our back door.  NBD, and when I fire it up, I annoy my family 50% less.  There might be some spare bike parts out there too.  Also, my used tires are all down in the crawlspace/murder room.

For the most part tho, most of what I need is within arm's reach.  If I wanna work with the stand (something I rarely do), I can grab some tools and head out to the inside outside (AKA the porch).

Tiny living is good living. 

As far as I'm concerned, I'm settled in, and this is how things will be until ded and that's okay.

4 comments:

glen said...

very well done!

Rob said...

But where does the grass-racing bike go?

dicky said...

Rob,

Dumpster.

Love,

Dick

Unknown said...

You must have been the shitz in 1982 holding the Magnavox Turbo Bass up to your ear listening to Funky Town.