Well, CB Kearney is quickly outgrowing our current location, and it is time to expand. Besides, working by myself all day can get kind of lonely, and there is no one to bounce ideas off.  Two of my friends and fellow woodworkers, Don Price and James Watriss, from North Bennet Street School have come to similiar conclusions and are willing to look for space to share. We can consolidate our machinery and tools, reduce our overhead, and help each other out throughout the furniture making process.

Exterior of 250 Canal St (Washington Mills)

It took a while , but we were finally able to locate some decent studio space that meet our requirements; 200 amp/3-phase electric service, loading docks, freight elevators, adequate light, and relatively unobstructed space. We found all this at the old Washington Mills building at 250 Canal St in Lawrence, MA.

We were looking for a few months and every place we visited was lacking one thing or another; from cinder block walled contractor bays with no windows to flood prone basements. We saw it all and are happy that we waited. When we walked through the doors of the studio we knew that we were home.

The studio is just over 3500 sq ft and has 14 ft ceilings.

South West End of Shop

Only thee columns interupt the space, so there is plenty of infeed and out feed room. There is a small office at one end of the shop that we will convert into a finishing room for hand finishing. We’ll leave the spray finishing to the guys with a spray booth. One wall is all windows and the natural light is amazing. The only draw back that I can forsee is that the windows are south-facing, and it is going to be hot in the summer. We plan on air conditioning the finishing/office room, so hopefully we will be able to find some respite there. Besides I could probably stand to lose some water weight.

Let the build-out begin!

-CB-

Tags: shop planning

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 19th, 2009 at 3:31 pm and is filed under Shop. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.