The Joy of a Workshop

It is a nasty sleety kind of winter day and I am sitting in my shop, tea in hand, just contemplating all things motorcycle. It has occurred to me just how fortunate I am to have a space called “shop” attached to the house. It hasn’t always been so. In the not-so-distant past there were at least 20 years of scrounging for winter motorcycle storage space, working on my bikes in driveways and leaving them outside from the beginning of the riding season until the last possible day in the fall. My bikes were always covered when not in use, but still outside.

Ten years ago when we bought this house on 5 acres of rocky land, it had an attached single-car garage that was not much more than a shed. Dirt floor, uninsulated with two mingy windows, a thriving community of mice, and a tin one-piece garage door that didn’t close properly.  My husband decided that it would make an ideal workshop for his machine tools and it was miraculously transformed.  Cement floor, four lovely big casement windows, insulated and heated, with wide garden doors at the front.  My bikes were destined to live outside again the following winter except that I had a tantrum and space was allocated in ‘his’ shop for bikes during the cold months! Construction or purchase of a bike shed was considered. Then fortunes changed and we built a completely new structure to house both his day job and his shop tools and machines as well… and this wonderful bright space officially became home to my motorcycles.