{"id":5689,"date":"2013-05-11T09:46:15","date_gmt":"2013-05-11T13:46:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.monocoque-metalworks.com\/main\/?p=5689"},"modified":"2013-05-11T09:56:03","modified_gmt":"2013-05-11T13:56:03","slug":"doing-everything-the-hard-way","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.monocoque-metalworks.com\/main\/2013\/05\/doing-everything-the-hard-way\/","title":{"rendered":"Doing EVERYTHING the hard way…"},"content":{"rendered":"

OK – so we’ve just about finished the new upstairs office, shipping, bathroom, guest room, E-Type man cave – whatever you want to call it…\u00a0 Actually, someone who came over here called it “The Cockpit” – and I might stick with that.<\/p>\n

I probably shouldn’t tell you this, but most of my friends and family think the word “monocoque” is hilarious – I can remember them making fun of it in high school!\u00a0 They all call the business “Cockworks” for short…<\/p>\n

Anyway – I realized a couple of weeks ago that now that I have this room built, I don’t have any furniture.\u00a0 I need a desk, shelves, some kind of packing table – alot actually.\u00a0 I got ahold of a shipping supplies catalog, and they had these steel “packing tables” in there, and I thought, “Hmmm – that looks like it would work pretty well – I should get one of those!”\u00a0 And then, “Hey wait a minute – those look EXACTLY like the steel tables I bought last Spring!”<\/p>\n

When I went down to Hendersonville, NC last Spring to pick up the English wheel, I also stopped and spent a few days with my parents.\u00a0 My father had picked up some steel tables for his shop, and they caught my eye right away.\u00a0 He said they had tons of them down at the resale shop, come on, I’ll take you down there!<\/p>\n

Well, I had the truck, and these were pretty heavy duty steel tables, so I bought the best 4 they had for $75 each, and we spent a couple hours taking them apart and loading them into my truck.\u00a0 Those, plus the English wheel, made for a pretty heavy (but typical) load on the way home!<\/p>\n

And then they just sat up against the shop under a tarp ever since.\u00a0 I had ideas about using them for benches downstairs, but then I thought I might like wood instead and there weren’t enough and blah, blah, blah…\u00a0 But then when I saw this packing table idea, I got the bright idea of cleaning them up and painting them and using them for upstairs furniture.<\/p>\n

Well, that worked out great – IF you consider that my time is worth about $5 an hour, because as usual, this took ALOT longer than I expected, and of course, I went WAY overboard on the level of detail…\u00a0 But I do have nice strong tables upstairs now!<\/p>\n

After all of this was done, I stood upstairs and looked at these and thought, “I need more of these – this is the answer for the new shop downstairs.”\u00a0 So I called I contacted Lyon (these are Lyon benches – highly recommend them…), and the local rep gave me a quote on everything I need for about 40 running feet of these with shelves and drawers and the whole bit.\u00a0 It was WAY less than I thought it would be, and proof that I was nuts for restoring these.\u00a0 Oh well, sometimes you just have to pay your dues to get something good in the end – God knows these E-Types are that way!<\/p>\n