Today Wallace Newton headed up a crew and got all the heavy machine shop equipment loaded into the trailers. Seems like the more we move, the more there is.

I'll grab a bunch more heavy duty straps and tie it all down Monday morning and I promise to be at TechShop to open up by noon on Monday. Then we will tie down all the heavy equipment and have these two trailers taken over to the new location and have two more empty trailers brought so we can fill them up too. That should do it. We should be at least 2/3 of the way through and all the really heavy stuff is already done.

We sure could use some more help and as always, we are happy supply food and soft drinks to all the volunteers. Get there early and have a say in the choice. We did Jimmy John's twice and pizza today. What do you want Monday?

Matt Rouse and a helper started framing the walls at the new location. I have promised to have the final floorplan for him so he can start full speed Tuesday morning. I have put many hours into the plans and had many suggestions from members. This is, after all, your TechShop and we want it to be the best it can be for you.

We're also renting spaces like crazy so I have added more. We still have some available and if you let me know what size you want, I can still try to accommodate your needs.

Hope you can make it to help us for the final stage of packing and cleaning. I'll be there by noon on Monday.

Thanks,

Scott

Since a lot of people are watching the blog, I will try asking here first.

We need one or two more people Sunday morning at 9AM to help Wallace Newton move the heavy equipment, Mills, Lathes, Plasma Cutter etc. No heavy lifting involved. But you will be working with very heavy items.

If you can help, please email me at scott@techshopdurham.com so I don't have to send out an email to the 1200 people on the mailing list.

Also, we need more pallets. I know I told several people we had enough, but I was wrong. We could probably use another 20 pallets, maybe more. There's a lot of stuff here!

Thanks,

Scott

Boxes too. Looks like we can use more medium size boxes. We have plenty of small boxes but medium size ones are no where to be seen.

Today we moved the two full trailers over by the new shop and got two more empty ones. A lot more got packed today but there is still a lot to pack this weekend.

Sunday we will be loading the heavy machinery. Wallace Newton will be heading up this important task. He has even more experience than I do with this sort of moving so I am glad to have him take this on.

The metal studs arrived today and Matt Rouse went back over and took more measurements. I'll be spending more time Saturday finalizing the upstairs layout so he can start building the walls.

The floor downstairs was finished today. We will not even step on it until it cures.

We're hoping for a big turnout Saturday. People will be arriving at 10. I hope you can join us.

Thanks,

Scott

This is going to be a huge blog entry with a lot of new information that will be exciting to quite a few members. If you don't have time to read the whole thing, scan down to see all the subjects and pick the ones you are interested in.

Cleaning

While this is probably the least interesting part of moving, it is one of the most important. Keeping things clean while we are moving and then finally cleaning each space and closing the door on it needs to be done and anyone who will help with this part will be everyone else's favorite person.

Trailer Loading

Things are moving quickly with the loading. The first two trailers are full. They will get taken away and two more will replace them Friday morning.

There's still a lot of stuff to get palletized and wrapped. You can come down and help with this any time you want to.

Building Walls

We will be receiving the studs for building the walls on Friday.

We are still looking for three more helpers for this project. Some skills in reading a tape measure and running a screw gun are helpful, but not required. If one person was able to do some lifting would be good too. We will need to hand carry all materials up the stairs by hand. I wish we had a way to forklift it up there, but we don't. We even have a crane available just up the street, but no way to get it in upstairs. Oh well.

Floor story

Carolina Debris has removed the carpeting from the downstairs floor and is in process of epoxying that space. This should be done by Friday or Saturday and ready for use by midweek next week. The way this all came down resulted in my redesigning the shop spaces and I really like what has come out of it. I have not yet shared the designs because ... well, I don't know how to post them. I will get on that and post where we are with the floor plans as soon as I can.

Music at TSRDU

Music at TechShop Durham has always been a problem for a lot of people. Most of us like to have music around us. But we all know that not everybody likes the same music. We have held a hard line on music ever since the beginning largely due to Headquarters stance on this due to safety reasons.

I have again talked to HQ about this subject and found they have new policies in place and we will be doing the same.

At TechShop RDU, you will be able to use your iPod or similar device to play music anywhere except while using any machine. You will also be able to have low volume music in any private space, the kitchen or hub area or any space that is not around any machines. Please respect the people around you. It could be your favorite music but the person near you could hate it. Hopefully there won't be any complaints and we can continue this policy.

Open hours

TechShop Durham's hours have been 12 hours a day, 7 days a week.

TechShop RDU's hours will likely be the same when we open, but we are expecting to be open longer hours very soon. We have quite a few people renting spaces at TSRDU and many want access to their space for extended hours. We may handle this one of two different ways. We might simply extend our hours, with an employee and access to all the shop spaces, or we might lock all the tools and equipment and give all renters a front door key and keys to their individual space. The new layout seems to offer this choice, and I am looking into making this a reality. After all, our goal is for TechShop RDU to be open 24/7.

You can help us succeed

We Need Your Help! This is not a done deal yet. In order for us to finish our buildout and get everything up and running we need people that will pitch in and help in one or more of these five ways:

1. Pledge to Become a Lender ($25,000 or More)

2. Pledge to Buy a Lifetime Membership ($5,000)

3. Pledge to Become a Monthly Member ($99/mo Auto-Pay)

4. Pledge to Make a Donation ($25 or More)

5. Pledge to Volunteer Your Time for Build-Out

Make Your Pledge or step forward with money Right Now. To pledge, please send email right now to "scott@techshopdurham.com" and indicate how you would like to pledge to help us finish TechShop RDU. Please include your name, phone number, and email address. If you want to step forward with money right now, you may email or call me to set up a time for us to meet.

Take pictures

We cannot have too many pictures of the beginnings of TechShop RDU. If you are coming, and have a camera, bring it and take pictures. We'll figure out how to post them soon enough. You might be the one to tell us how to do it best or even help us do it.

That's it

OK, that's it for now. I told you there was a lot. There will be more tomorrow too. Talk to you then

Scott

The first two trailers are here and we are:

• Sweeping floors
• Stacking things on pallets
• Stretch wrapping pallets
• Filling the first trailer with 26 pallets
• Then filling the second trailer with 26 pallets

We would love to fill the first trailer tonight and have it taken away Friday and another trailer brought here. This would give us two trailers to fill over the weekend and we would have a big chunk of this done.

If you want to come and help with this part, that would be great. Just show up.

Some food and drinks will be provided for workers.

Thanks,

Scott

The first truck is expected at 1PM today, Thursday and you are invited to come help us load it up. We'll buy food a bit later this afternoon and drinks are on us. (soft drinks, that is).

So come on down if you have the time and want to help.

Thanks,

Scott

Just a short note tonight. We're still working on the plans and should start the actual building of the walls on Thursday. So many people are wanting private spaces, I had to go back and add a bunch to the plan.

They're working on the floor and I will give a full report on that tomorrow.

Thursday will have us receiving one or two semi truck trailers. Not sure just what time, but we should be ready to start full speed Friday filling the first one or two up. We expect those to head on over to TSRDU on Monday. Then two more and we should have everything all packed up and waiting for the building to be ready. You can call to see if we need any help, but Friday for sure, if you can make it, come on down.

I promise to have a lot more information for you in Thursday's blog.

Scott

I mentioned buying us more time yesterday but did not say how much. Here is our present guess or goal, whichever you prefer, and a time frame for moving. No promises, just guesses.

• All personal property removed from the premises by Feb 7th. Any personal property not removed by February 7th becomes the property of TechShop unless specific arrangements have been made. We have too much stuff to move already. Please help us by removing all your stuff.
• TechShop Durham building totally empty and cleaned by February 15th.
• All major building and preparations to the TechShop RDU building completed by February 28th.
• Soft opening on March 1st then grand opening one year to the day of our first opening on March 21st or 23rd. March 21st was our celebration and the 23rd was actual opening for business.

We can think about this more as it gets closer. Of course, if we can do it sooner, all the better. The more help we get the faster it could go.

The roads are getting better and are now passable between the two locations however... we are not ready to start moving stuff into the building since it will make it harder to build the walls and paint and all that. Trust me, we do not want all our stuff in place when the sheet rock guys put up the rock and start sanding the seams.

So, thanks to the suggestion from one of our members, we are thinking we might complete the move in a slightly different way than originally planned. Here's what we are now thinking. And of course, this could change at any given moment. (:^)

We are thinking about loading up a few trailers. You know, 18 wheeler enclosed trailers that are used to haul goods across country. Anyway, we would load them up and move them to the new location. Once the building is ready, we would move the stuff out of the trailers and into the building. It all depends on the price and we will find out about that Wednesday. I should let you know the decision in tomorrow's blog entry.

Wallace Newton is heading up the "moving stuff" part of this and can be contacted by email at wallace@trimminc.com Please contact him if you want to help with this part of the move.

Matt Rouse is heading up the "wall framing" part of this and can be contacted by email at ratmouse@charter.net or by phone at 919-219-7104. Please contact him if you want to help with this part of the move.

At TechShop Durham, we offered private spaces at $2 per square foot per month. At TechShop RDU, we will be offering spaces for rent at $1 per square foot per month. I am drawing up the plans for building now and have already promised all the larger spaces I set aside in my first drawings. If you would be interested in renting a space at TechShop RDU, let me know what approximate size and I can plan it into the design. Let me know if you require a window or not. Right now, I have several rooms about 8' x 8' for around $65 a month and a couple around 100sf for $100. So please email me at scott@techshopdurham.com if you are interested in renting a room type space.

There will also be cubbyhole type spaces and sheet plywood spaces and long stock spaces but we're not talking about those right now. Those will be topics for another conversation.

Thanks,

Scott (Read more)

I got a couple of emails saying the new location wasn't on the website, so I have updated the "Location and Hours" page to show both the old and new addresses. We will update it again with a map soon.

We will tell everyone as soon as we have the new location open for business. We are expecting it to be some time in February. More than that,I just do n ot know right now.

Scott

A lot got done today.

We had several volunteers packing up a lot of stuff while I sat on my duff working on the layout with the help of several guys. Lots of input and lots of good ideas. Of course, I did get a lot of my office packed up too, but mostly I worked on the layout. I like what we have for upstairs and will work on the downstairs more tomorrow. We're going to need quite a few walls built, electrical run and plumbing too. If you want to volunteer to do any of these, you will be welcomed. If you want to get paid, we can talk about that too. But we do need to get experienced people working on this so it doesn't take a long time to finish.

Some of the roads are like nothing happened, while some are still almost impassable. Our route from TechShop Durham to TechShop RDU is via TW Alexander. That road is still pretty bad as of Sunday night. Not sure I think it's a great idea to start moving the big stuff yet unless they plow it overnight, but if anyone feels like hauling a truck or car load of stuff over on Monday, we'll get the new place opened up. Still, I'd say not until noon or so, but if you want to show up earlier, there's still a lot to pack.

Peter wanted me to write a new task list for packing, but since we are shutting everything down as of now, pretty much anything you see that you can pack and get ready to move is OK with me.

I'll post this on the front page and send out an email so everyone knows what is happening. As of now, all memberships are frozen and all equipment is off line. We will start them up again some time after we get things going at the new location. Thanks for the offer, but no, I don't need a place to store the laser cutter until we get moved.

The more people that help us move and set up, the faster we will be back up and running at the new location, so if you have some time, we sure would appreciate the help.

Thanks,

Scott (Read more)