Car Storage Part 6: Welcome and Unwelcome Guests
As regular readers know, I bought an old foundry to store my collection of terrible cars. I knew that rehabbing this facility would be a challenge, but the scale of the project is beyond what I even imagined. Could I really foresee that I’d find a prison shank and four pounds of rotting meat lying on the ground next to my tool pile? (More on that later.)
Let’s start with what’s gone better than I expected. Not long after the deal went through, a friend of mine named Thomas reached out with a need for storage space. Rent sounded good, but another pair of hands sounded even better. Thomas is 21, full of farm-boy knowledge and youthful energy. When time has allowed, Thomas has been glazing windows, sweeping floors, chopping down trees, and moving things in an ever less decrepit direction. The arrangement has been beneficial for both of us.
Another morsel of great news: For a grand total of $200, the foundry now has a 10-hp three-phase air compressor, a lift relocated from another shop, a permanently housed Dodge pickup, a go-kart, and a pit bike to run down to one of the many auto parts stores here in downtown Statesville, North Carolina. With the space, I also planted a mess of watermelon and corn because… why not?
On days when my motorsport engineering day job doesn’t imminently demand hands-on electronics work, I can work from home and squeeze in a short afternoon of foundry improvement. Another factor, which I’ll bury in a paragraph because I’m shy about shouting it from a mountaintop, is that I’m becoming a dad at the end of August. Thus, my office at home has been converted into a nursery. So why not turn the foundry’s foreman’s old digs into my personal workspace?
After an afternoon of vacuuming and getting the old chainfall windows into an operational state, I had myself an office. And with it comes a clear view of my Studebaker commuter parked outside. Ah, the foreman life. Now keep sweeping, you minions!
There may even be some historical preservation grants available for such properties, specifically abandoned commercial and industrial ones. I’m in the beginning stages of archeological exploration of the area, which has already uncovered a narrow gage railway and pulley system behind the building, both of which service the long-defunct coal hopper. I don’t know exactly what to do with these features yet, but the most important thing is to document what’s survived before I make any repairs or modifications. But let’s be real, having a functioning light rail line in the backyard would be sweet no matter what!
It’s not all roses. For one, the roof repair was more intensive and expensive than I’d anticipated, and in a week I ate through several of my future mortgage payment savings. Though it was costly, I now have 1600 square feet of new roof which I do not have to worry about for a long time.
With the shop floor now free from overhead moisture, I was unfortunately able to observe what was coming from the bottom up. The lake was about half the size as it used to be, but that didn’t change how my stomach felt. During the middle of a recent deluge, my trusty trenching shovel and I went on a mission of discovery behind the building. Between the south wall and the railroad tracks was an old storage room. In this small area, barely wide enough to fit through with a shovel, a roofing crew from a previous job filled it completely with roofing material and cases of Mountain Dew bottles. On top of that trash I found several years of silt, mud, and runoff.
After about three hours of digging amid pouring rain, the drainage system on the south wall started flowing again.
The following weekend, I continued my actions along the east wall, nearly reaching the street. I paused at the point of exhaustion, which is when a friendly groundhog apparently cleared the last 50 feet of drainage by making a home inside the drain pipe, thereby excavating all of the Skoal cans, broken sunglasses, and Takis bags into a neat pile. Thanks, nature!
One of my more embarrassing mistakes of late was rushing in to move all of my (and Thomas’) stuff into the foundry prior to properly securing the place. I know, I know, I was warned in the comments: Get a security system. Get a bigger fence. Get a pit bull. Call it optimism about mankind, call it naivete, or call it an invitation to property theft, but two days after moving in, Thomas shot me a text asking why I had emptied my toolbox out into the middle of the floor. Obviously, this was immediately followed by a frantic phone call.
The cop showed up within minutes of Thomas calling, and we found ourselves on speakerphone with the officer as I drove toward the foundry. We were rightfully reprimanded for not having security cameras watching over our cheap tools and garbage vehicles. Fair point.
Our DIY CSI: Statesville yielded the following: The thieves had kicked in a narrow man door that led to a loading area near the railroad tracks. They proceeded to empty the toolboxes and organize everything into piles on the floor. From there, two huge municipal trash cans were filled completely not with heavy valuables, but rather rotten speaker boxes, camp chairs, hydraulic jacks, and car dollies. At some point near the end of this exercise, the robbers made the breakthrough discovery that the cans were too heavy to lift up the 18” step and too wide to fit through the door. Locked in otherwise, they filled their pockets with what they could take and left everything else behind, including a gigantic mess.
After taking inventory of everything in the shop, the only things that I could determine had been stolen were a leaf blower and a 3/8-inch-drive ratchet. Overall, a cheap yet terribly inconvenient lesson to learn.
About two weeks later, I realized that the thieves had left two items behind… so I guess we’re even? Not so much. One of those items was an extremely sharp homemade shank. Yikes. The second thing—which I found after chasing a smell for over a week—was their stolen food stash. Nearly five pounds of chicken tenders, pork chops, and brats had been wrapped in thick cellophane, covered in packing tape, and left atop a rolling cart. The expiration date on this food was nearly 5 weeks prior to the break-in. Don’t do drugs, kids.
It took about two weeks to get everything back in order. Since then we followed all of the officer’s recommendations, including visible security cameras and a fence that makes the whole place look like a correctional facility.
One more bit of good to close this out. Following the felonious actions, Thomas brought a couple of his friends out to help with the cleanup. As it turned out, they needed some rental space, too! Now we have three guys in the foundry at nearly any given time of day or night, working security and mechanic detail. As I quickly check the security cameras while writing this, they’re inside sweeping up and rebuilding a KA24 Nissan motor. As far as I am concerned, that beats out most other local Saturday night activities. I have even more storage renters in the works—the breakeven point for my cost is in sight! And without their help I highly doubt I could manage all of this alone.
We’ve had our stumbles, but the culture we’re building at the old Troutman foundry far outweighs the headaches and handsomely exceeds the material benefits I had originally envisioned. This whole thing might just be crazy enough to work.
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I second the motion about lights. How much light is enough? If there is a serious risk of sunburn, you have almost enough light. Maybe. Trying to work under a 60 watt bulb (standard “one bulb cave” repair shop) is a great way to get hurt or lose parts simply because you can’t SEE anything! Do not skimp on lighting, it makes your life so much easier.
Set the lights up in zones – one light switch for lights in one bay. That way you only pay for the electricity in the areas you are using instead of lighting up the whole place at once. I did that in my building (50 by 90) and if I turn everything on at once, I get phone calls from the ISS because it is bright enough to be visible from space. There are nine zones, at most I use two at a time, so I don’t need a second mortgage to pay my electric bill.
I needed 48 four foot fluorescent tubes, they come in a box of 50. Price at the time was $48.50, free shipping at $50, so I added a screwdriver to the order to go over the $50 and I’m sure that saved me a bunch of freight. You don’t need LED tubes because you aren’t in there all day every day, so if your usage is only a few hours a night, LED’s aren’t worth the extra cost.
Add some 220 outlets at strategic points, you might want to run a compressor or welder. You can also get an old, junky stove (220v), sometimes free, and the oven works really well if you are powder coating small to medium sized parts. (Your bride will kill you if you try to powder coat anything in the oven in the house.)
Tons od good advice in this post E.F. 👍
Always good advice from E.F.!
Your last paragraph was wonderful. Creating a community is WAY beyond what most of us can expect from even a well-lived life. Very inspirational.
another nice thing about the building being an old foundry, is that there should be an overhead crane or two in the place. Extremely handy to have. Because it was a commercial facility, the rating of said crane should be marked. Even if they only used crawl beams and chain hoists, if those are still in place (i saw at least one in a photo), you can add your own chain hoist if needed. Very nice score, and congrats on fatherhood and new friends.
First of all thanks for the congrats. Luckily there are no fewer than 6 gantries and most of them have push beam trollies except for one with a 1.5 ton electric trolly and chain fall. The tracks of these overhead train lines are being taken into account as the interior space is being reconfigured.
Make sure you have fire insurance since you have other renters working there.
Good point. While you are talking to your insurance agent (and it should be an *independent* agent, not a “company” agent), talk about liability insurance. If someone manages to get hurt, and sooner or later they will, considering this is an amateur hobby shop, you do NOT want to get sued if some idiot’s car falls on them when they crawl under it after they jacked it up with a bumper jack to put it onto cinder blocks and you weren’t looking or even there at the time.
You may also want to consider putting the building into an LLC so if you do get sued and lose, your house and other personal assets are no longer at risk. (Check with the lender, a change in ownership may trigger a due on sale clause in the mortgage.) Consider also a hold-harmless and wavier which everyone MUST sign before even walking in the door. Don’t use a generic form off the internet, get a competent attorney to generate it for you. Generic forms off the internet are usually worth exactly what you paid for them – zilch. Further, if the attorney writes the form and you get sued anyway, the attorney has Errors and Omissions insurance if the form was defective or incomplete and didn’t protect you.
CYA – first aid kits, fire extinguishers (many), eye wash station, exit lights, have an evacuation plan, workplace safety posters and POLICY with periodic reviews (attendance required), oil spill absorbent mats, show that you are at least trying to have a safe place. People are constantly finding new and exciting ways to get injured, and you don’t want to be the one who pays their bills. (I’m not trying to be a killjoy, but a personal injury – or worse, a wrongful death – lawsuit will completely ruin your day.)
I think what you are doing is admirable, and I’d love to see more people be able to do it because there is a definite need. As was mentioned, you are building a community here – and lord knows we need more things to bring us together nowadays instead of tearing us apart – BUT you have some serious liability exposures in multiple areas and I have a feeling that visits to an insurance agent and an attorney ought to be on your schedule tomorrow morning.
Exhausted Flyer – far from being a killjoy, you are laying out some realistic (and quite informative) topics and ideas that almost any of us could likely use in some of our own circumstances (even if Matthew has already covered those bases or even chooses to ignore them). Instead of floating gloom and doom scenarios, you are merely pointing out logical “what ifs” that many might not even consider, and I for one thank you for your suggestions!
Good advice, as always. Rest assured I’m LLC’d and insured out the wazoo already.
For some reason when I look at those photos I can’t help but see a crusty old guy named Darnell telling some snot nosed kid that he can park his rat bag ’58 Fury over in that stall but that he won’t take any crap from the kid.
Good movie – but chilling thought…
This sounds like what I always dreamed of having! Just never had enough money or time–at the same time–to make it happen. I am telling one of my friends, whose love of cars has WAY outstripped his home/garage space. When we talk, I always ask if he has obtained a warehouse yet!
“Rest assured I’m LLC’d and insured out the wazoo already.”
Matt, I am glad indeed to hear this.
What frightens me is that some people really have no idea how close they come to disaster. Darwin is alive and well, and he is watching.
I’ve personally saved two lives involving cars. Way back when I was 18 or so (I’m 77 now), a friend of mine was putting a Hurst floor shifter into his 57 Ford. He had the rear wheels off, jacked up on a bumper jack, on asphalt, on a warm day. (You see this coming, right?) I’m sitting nearby watching this and I notice the car starting to shift . . . “Get out!! It’s moving!!!!” He didn’t stop to ask questions, but got out from under *right now*. Three seconds later, the car crashed to the ground, right down to the frame rails. He’s damn lucky I just happened to stop by that afternoon – he was doing this by himself. That was definitely an oh sh*t moment.
Second time was some years later. I was teaching in a vocational school, the subject was how to use a multimeter. The meters originally had alligator clips on the leads, but they had long since disappeared to be used for “other purposes”. We had straightened paper clips instead, 12 volts isn’t going to hurt you (or shouldn’t anyway).
I’m scribbling on the blackboard, hand goes up, yes? If I set the meter correctly, can I measure the voltage in the wall socket? Yes . . . waitaminnit – WHAT did he just say to me?
I turned around and there’s idiot child on his knees, about to stick a bare paper clip in each hand into the 120 volt wall socket. “STOP!!!!!!!!!!!!!”
Moron looks up at me and in all innocence says “What?”
I’ve watched people work around rotating machinery while they were wearing a tie, step over a rotating PTO shaft on a tractor instead of taking three extra seconds to walk around the attachment, wash parts in gasoline and then light up a cigarette, it just goes on and on. I even had one clown “demonstrate” to me that it was OK to smoke around gasoline because if you dropped a cigarette into a bucket of gasoline, it would go out. Guess what – it didn’t. Scary. Really scary. (I retired to a safe distance for this demo, he insisted it was going to be OK and I had nothing to worry about.)
Dear Bride (of 28 years so far) is an attorney. Some of the stories she tells me (which I officially don’t hear) leave me with my jaw hanging open in amazement. I’ve also been in mortgages, finance and real estate for 40 years or so, which means I’ve learned more about law and insurance than I ever really wanted to know.
I’m happy to pass along some of the stuff I’ve learned and I’m glad it isn’t being interpreted as my being fussy or gloom-spreading. Mark Twain said it is easier to stay out (of trouble) than to get out (of trouble), and I think that’s pretty good advice, so I listen.
One last item – try to score a fire cabinet to store gas cans and flammable solvents, etc. New they’re about a grand, used ones show up on Craigslist periodically for $200 or so. Be aware they are HEAVY so you’ll need some help to load and unload. Put it on casters so you can shove it around until you find the best place to put it. (Have a fire extinguisher adjacent.)
Keep at it, and best wishes!
When we closed the print shop where I worked in 2004, the fire cabinets were the first pieces of equipment I bid on. I was too cheap though, and someone else got all four of them. Man, that was depressing!
If we could rate you up Exhausted Flyer, you’d see that many either agree, learn from, and appreciate your input here which is wisdom (not doom and gloom).
Thanks for posting it.
Hear hear!
We had a small car repair shop next to our backyard and one day the owner was under a car and the bumper jack kicked out and the car fell on him, as luck would have it a car full of 3 guys pulled in and in a flash they raised the car up enough to get him out, no injuries but one more breath and he would have been gone.
I have a 4000 sq. ft. warehouse 1/2 business ,1/2 toys . all block w/brick exterior . yours appears to metal over block base ! start saving $ now for insulation and heating cost . infared over head is good for work areas,heats me ,my tools and my alfas while i am working .and wilmington NC isn’t nearly as cold as Statesville! Good luck with both of your new adventues in life .