Having a business in your yard means we have to think things through carefully and do some creative problem-solving. We require a commercial dumpster that is readily accessible to the large truck that comes every second week to empty it. Since the parking lot adjacent to the shop is needed to stockpile finished features, we opted to put it nearer to the front of the property. But dumpsters are not very pretty, so we hid it inside a good-sized mountain/planter. Giant metal doors allow access to the dumpster. Behind that, we built a second room to house the riding and push mowers and other yard tools. Between the ‘mountain and fence is where the various recycling bins are, handy but hidden from the front of the yard. This structure has been in various stages of finish for many years. Over the last few weeks, our crew completed the sculpting of the last timbers, and today the last of the paint was polished off.
SignMedia article
SignMedia, Canada’s premier sign magazine, is celebrating its twentieth anniversary. As part of that celebration, the editor selected one article from each year to feature in this month’s magazine. The story she picked for 2011 was an article about one of our earliest dimensional signs made on our CNC router. It was exciting to discover the capabilities of both the router and software back then. That journey continues to this day! Reading the article was a fun trip down memory lane.
New wall
On the rear wall of our shop is a plywood wall that houses our ‘Zombie Apocalypse Station’… which is a fun way to name the rack where we store our shovels, rakes, hoes and other garden tools. We fastened plywood to the insulated concrete forms (ICF), and over the last twenty years, the plywood had begun to rot a little at the bottom. Rather than replace the plywood, we cut off the bottom three feet, and the crew added some sculpted concrete rock. Over the next few weeks, this, along with the rest of the rear of the shop, will receive fresh paint to make it last for decades to come.
