Well it has been a whole year since I started this blog and I have to admit it is not always easy to find things to write about and sometimes you have to wait for the right subject matter to rear it’s head and then BANG!!!! you have it. Over the last month and a half there have been quite a few opportunities to write about one particular subject however there are only a set number of times you can write about the moaning and complaining modellers within our hobby and boy do they like to moan, it gets to a point sometimes when you just have to stay away from the various forums and social media platforms just to keep sane because sometimes enough is just enough, and to be honest I’d had enough.
On to more positive thoughts, at the start of the new year I decided that my workroom was no longer working in it’s current state, the desk was oversized, I wasn’t using the rooms natural light as I had moved the desk away from the window (don’t ask), it was overcrowded with boxes of non modelling related stuff spare doors for my kitchen cupboards and nearly 20 years of buying models and not really building, well finishing them is more to the point so in a bout of new year enthusiasm I decided the time had come to sort it all out, so with pad pencil and tape measure in hand I ventured into the workroom to devise my plan. The room itself is a not very big and is what is commonly known as the box room so when you fill it to almost bursting point with stuff it is hard to work out where to start however with my enthusiasm unabated I started measuring and fermenting my plans.
I thought I would start by dismantling the desk a big old Ikea number which would then free up some space to move stuff around which in theory sounded like a great plan however the reality was not how I had envisaged it, when I moved the desk from it’s original place in the house my workroom was relatively empty now it was chock full to the rafters and manoeuvring stuff about so I could undo the bolts that held the higher level shelving ensemble together was no mean feat, neither was doing the same to get to the 4 or so bolts that held the 2 ‘legs’ on, once I had managed this and removed the offending remnants of the desk I thought I would have a lovely big space to work in, sadly I had not taken into account what I was going to do with the stuff that had lived on, underneath or on the high shelving that made up the Ikea desk. This is where the frustrations started to creep in, I had envisaged a reasonably complex project yet short in terms of time yet every time I entered the room more and more issues were screaming out for my attention, however now that I had started I needed to persevere and see it through to the end otherwise my once lovely workroom would just become a glorified cupboard.
Once the desk was gone I needed to think about what to do with my endless, (well it seems endless and you stand and look at it) selection of unbuilt, and part built kits that sit quietly on a selection of Ikea shelving of varying lengths and widths adorning the rooms 4 walls, you could say my workroom had become more of a bad advert for Ikea than a modelling room however I needed a solution to what to do with this large dare I say it ‘collection’ of kits something with a bit more flexibility than wall mounted shelves. After I had spent 5 or so minutes searching the internet and Amazon in particular looking at the possible solutions to my conundrum I settled on some nice easy to assemble (and the first 2 were, more on that later) 5 tier racking, I thought I would be able to get the stash on these no problem, oh! how wrong was I. The racking arrived a few days later and I felt a little bit closer to reaching my goal. Another frustration in this self inflicted headache I mean project of mine was the factor of time, it was taking so long just to achieve the smallest amount of gain, firstly the problem of working in a room that still has it’s entire contents still in residence is a major stumbling block and as you need to virtually empty the room before you do any work and as this takes a good hour or so, you can only really do this at weekends, which also creates its own set of frustrations because you spend a great deal of time doing the workroom and very little time doing very little else, which I am sure pleases the ever suffering and very understanding Kerry because I guess while I am doing this I am not bothering her or breaking airbrushes and swearing about it.
Having bought, built, and put the racking in place, filled them up with some boxes full of magazines on the bottom to add some weight, two things were becoming quite clear, 1 I had far too many models, and 2 with the racks in place I was short of space for my planned workbench so it was back to the drawing board, and yet another solution was required. On the other side of the room I have a bookcase, now as I have come to work out this is no ordinary bookcase, it is a bookcase on a par with the Tardis or Mary Poppins’ handbag. When I first moved into my workroom back in 2003 I removed the horrible and ugly set of spotlights with the plan of putting a strip light in and things being what they are I never got round to it and as the light switch is virtually flush I covered it over with said bookcase, now with the light back on the agenda I felt I needed to move the bookcase over and free up the light switch, to do this I needed to empty it, once emptied I needed to move and refill it, and yes you guessed it I ended up with at least a shelf full of books with no home, I really do love how things evolve over time and once you alter them it all goes a bit awry and are altered forever. So now the book case had moved I realised that I needed another bookcase to pick up the slack so once again the tape measure came out and it dawned upon me that I needed either a very thin bookcase, or a new one to fill the space entirely and then it came to me in a flash of light, well maybe not as spectacular, if I bought another set or two of racking I could turn one into a bookcase, and being bigger than the old bookcase would take my books, some magazines and I would still have space for some more, the other racking could pick up the rest of the stash, and although now they have been ordered, delivered, built (yet not as easy as the first 2, I think these ones had either been danced upon by Elephants or somebody somewhere hates me because they fought me and Kerry all the way and took to being built very very reluctantly). With the room rejigged and filled with books on one wall the surplus stash on the other and although the bookcase needs some reorganising it looks ok and will take a bit of getting used too, the surplus stash is still looking rather surplus albeit a bit less in number and I still have a few more hurdles to overcome until the room looks a bit more how I envisage it.
It has been over a week since I last did anything with my work in progress and I have had time to think about a few of the issues facing me in the cold light of day, these are quite simple 1, I have far too many kits that I have completed that have got broken over time and they need to go, 2, I have far too many kits that I have part built and lost interest in or have parts that have either got broken or lost, and 3, I have far too many kits, far too many for me to build especially at my current build rate and far too many I will never build so I need to go through them and sell them on, the cull is underway my friends. As for the room itself, I have a list of things that I still need to do before I can think of installing my workbench, I need to clear the floor of kits for starters so I need to put back up a couple of shelves to take the slack, rearrange the racking to maximise the space, purchase a spray booth (I have my eye on what I need) and that will enable me to paint in doors once again so no more freezing my legs off in the build up to Telford, and I can get back to modelling again in a room that is more user friendly and exactly how I want it. Will it have been worth it? I think so, the room has evolved over the last 15 years into in unusable mish mash which has made it difficult to model in so at least once it is done I can get back to enjoying the hobby once more because to be honest I haven’t been recently and I have begun to miss how much enjoyment I used to get out of it, it’s a glorious hobby and it is there to be enjoyed.
The Average Modeller
