A Place We call Home

I finally "dropped" everything and decide to rent a space to do things that I have always wanted to do: "tinkering". The choice basically narrowed down to "financial stablity" and "passion", passion won.

To elborate, the choice wasn't mine and just mine alone, It was over the months of "discussing" and having "plum wine" at my house with my current business partner that made me take this "leap-of-faith". I am blessed to find a similar like-minded partner, Johnathan Ho, to "go" into business with. Having said that, though he is technically "sound", however getting him to apply his knowledge to work and getting him to work is a different thing as he is semi-retired and he is against the idea of working. I'll dedicate an entire blog post on him sometime in the near future (when time permits)... NOTE TO JOHNATHAN =)

While waiting to acquired the keys to the place in late April, my next task of business was to get the layout, drawings, and "as-build" drawing in place to submit to the relevant authorities to kick off the renovation. Fortunately for me, I do have a builder License which I acquired some time back =) After getting all the relevant paper work in place, we started our renovation in early May. The process (i.e. Plans, mezzanie, electrical wirings) took us almost 3 months but we finally have a "home" by end August.

The "journey" to look for an ideal place was long-drawn and setting up the workshop was ardous as we decided at one point that all our work benches, tables, chairs (ie furnishings) should be made by ourself. Credits have to be given to Johnathan for all the furnishing builds but it sure took him a while and a TONS on nagging at my end because again, he "is" semi-reitred.

The 1st task was to get the "cheapest" possible 4' x 8' work bench that we can possibly build and table #1 was made. It was built with

- 4 ikea ANTONIUS series with 8 drawers (Actual build would requires 16 but I got "cheap"),

- 4 pieces of 15mm 4' x 8' ply wood,

- 3 pairs on roller wheels (6 wheels in total).

We named it "Anton" for oblivious reason.

The final build total amount to about SG$380 not $250 as mentioned in my drawing below. Reason was because we mounted 2 pieces of 15mm wood as the based for wheels (6 coaster wheels in total), stacked the 4 ikea ANTONIUS series as shown and top it with another 2 pieces of 15mm ply. On the top of it, we lay a vinyl top.

From the 1st work bench, we then build our "BigA Ox" and at a later stage, the rest of our furnishings. The idea of our furnish came from "discovery" of V-slot extrusion which we used on our "BigA Ox". Over that few months, we were able to find alternatives to V-slot extrusion and through John's "visions" and experimentation, came up with more sturdy 4' x 8' work benches and even seats. Below shows some of his works: