woytek

Hi Kevin! Also a fellow Pittsburgher, my wife and I own an old Victorian in the Parnassus section of New Kensington. I started woodworking a few years before I met my wife. I bought this home shortly before meeting her, but I wasn't doing much serious woodworking, and as a result great shop space was not high on my list of priorities for the house. Fast-forward several years to now, when I find myself deriving a lot of joy from working with wood, and have taken over most of the basement as shop space. While I am lucky to have a little more space than your shop, I have the same issues with headroom, electricity, lighting, and usable space (old basements often have funky and hard-to-modify shapes, as I'm sure you've noticed). Of course, add to that the usual water entry during heavy rains, and my shop space is pretty far from dream-worthy.

I've found good ways to work in my shop, including on some larger projects. I need to devise better wood storage and build myself a real workbench. I need to figure out a better way to do fume extraction when finishing (the open basement door to the steps leading up to the back yard makes things a little chilly in winter). All in all, though, I don't know if I would have it any other way. There's a lot to be said for being close to my wife and the comforts of home, and our cats like to play "shop cat" with me (making sure to take lots of sawdust and cobwebs up to the main floors with them, of course).

Dealing with the small work space is a work form in and of itself. It looks like you're doing a good job with yours.

Perhaps someday those of us in the area should get together to share some Pittsburgh-style workshop issues, solutions and stories.

jonathan