I Have a New Tool Room!

This whole reclaiming my house thing has been pretty cool but this worked out better than I could have hoped for. This room was a back hall with an outside door and big closet when Lodi moved in. He needed a gun room to lock because of his arsenal he wanted to start purchasing. With his arrest he is finally gone for good which has left me with this quite unnecessary “room” totally empty. He talked me into swapping the outside door here with the window in the guest bedroom and adding a wall and door to create this space. I really wish I hadn’t done any of that… but it turns out I might be able to get some use of it!

For those reading along you know I started all of this in the room I designed to be an office by desperately trying to make it into a guest bedroom when just the craziest idea came to me.

Maybe it should be my office!?

And that’s what started this little snow ball effect for these spaces. Everything just fell into place. My old “office” returned to being my guest bedroom that it was always designed to be but there was one problem: I was currently using the big closet in there as my literal in house tool shed.

Where oh where could all of my tools go?

I did have a minute looking at this space wondering how on earth everything was going to fit!

I started with pulling out all of my paint and moving the two rolling drawers into the tool room. At first I had the drawers along the back wall under the tool bench but I couldn’t open the back upper drawer because of the support brackets. So they ended up working out on the right hand side. All of my leftover buckets of paint, stain and poly fit nice underneath the bench and, amazingly, all of my leftover spray paint and caulk etc. fit on the top shelf.

Though these shelves were NOT meant for that much weight!

So, a brief intermission of my adding extra support to everything and I was really impressed at this point with just how much I had already moved in here. I knew everything I had hanging from the back wall was going to fit on the peg board so I was excited to keep on it. I moved over the four magnetic strips and the two brackets I was using to hang my drills and hammers.

And, my gosh, I couldn’t believe how this little room transformed.

I did a little purging, of course, but not much.

My tools fit like I designed this space for them!

Oh and wow my poor guest bedroom closet needs some major patching…

I’m working on my basement again (for either guests or renters) so I brought up my little chest freezer and it fit perfect in here. The door /dog door in the new guest bedroom is pretty crappy for guests so I am SO tempted to just cut a hole in the wall in my new tool room (it would be under the work bench beside the freezer) and put in a much smaller doggie door.

Then I could close up the guest bedroom for the winter and save on heating it. And the door to the tool room isn’t original here so I wouldn’t mind cutting a hole in it for Link so I could keep that room shut all winter as well.

However I don’t plan on having dogs after I lose Link.

I lost my last dog back in 2017 and I got quite weary of taking care of Lodi’s dogs for him. (It is interesting how taking care of my own dogs was quite different for me… I think I felt a bit like my mom probably did while I was growing up having to take care of and pay for my childhood dogs while I reaped all the benefits.)

I do love little Link but I don’t want more.

And, this might sound awful, but I didn’t pick him. Both of Lodi’s dogs were forced into my care and responsibility because I won’t stand by to an animal being neglected and Lodi was a terrible pet owner.

So, it leaves me wondering if it is worth cutting a hole in my wall, building a new doggie door, building a new back step and cutting a hole in the tool room door just for the time Link has left…

Writing this blog post out has put it in some perspective as Link is 15 so I definitely have some decisions to make before next winter…

Meanwhile though, this room makes me happy which is something I never thought possible considering why this space even exists. But I actually really love my new tool room and now I’m even using my chest freezer when before there was no place to keep it on my main floor.

Sometimes things work out!

(Get your own tool room sign here)