When I first started doing lapidary and was in the learning phase – I was paying for shop time at a local rock shop. I believe it was $45 for a punch card with several spots to be punched out when time was used at the shop. I made use of this frequently.
Over time, I had become well acquainted with the owner of the business and was helping with things whenever I was around. I even sold material that I have polished in the shop to help fund other projects.
Eventually, I wasn’t paying for shop time anymore. I was just part of the shop and volunteered as often as I could.
While there, I was able to make small investments and gathered equipment from time to time. I built my lapidary cart while I was there and even was able to get my hands on a Genie for a heck of a good price! I would store everything in our little apartment in the smallest room possible. There wasn’t much room but that was okay. It was a start!
One day in 2017, I went my own way and even acquired a couple rock estates. The first rock estate was rather large and none of it was in buckets. Finding a large amount of buckets was not an easy task and took some time!
The biggest issue at hand though was storage. We were still in our apartment and we didn’t have storage, however, a very dear friend of mine not long ago had offered to allow me to convert part of his storage into a lapidary workshop so I would have more space. I instead asked if I could store rock in that space until I had room for it.
He was cool with that plan. So we moved over 200 buckets of rough rock along with several large pieces of lapidary equipment into this tiny storage room. There was not much walking space to the light switch when we got done!
It sat in storage for a little while until 2018 when we had the opportunity of a lifetime to move into a bigger residence that had a garage and fenced backyard.
Within a month moving in and still getting situated, I acquired yet another smaller estate and more equipment.
I was slowly growing the essentials needed to build a foundation of a dream.
Once moved in, it took many trips to and from storage to gather all the material and bring it to our new home to be sorted and put into their respective piles. The sorting process took a very long time because not only did I sort them, I had to spray them off. So yeah…that took months.
Now that I had equipment, material, and a comfortable space. I needed to make it my own.
The garage was pretty dim, grungy, and didn’t have very many outlets to work with but I made it work for some time until I was able to start with the necessary changes.
I started with a rough drawing of what I wanted it to look like and from there I planned out what I wanted to do with the shop and in what order. I very well couldn’t afford to hire someone to come in to gut everything and to sheetrock/finish the walls. (That was the initial plan…was to sheetrock)
So I figured I would just do it all in stages and save money by doing it myself while using YouTube to learn some new skills to achieve the vision I had.
The only things I didn’t do myself was installing the new window or getting the new garage roll up door.
It took a couple of years but eventually I had reached the goal I was aiming for.
A clean, well lit, customized work space with ample storage and more outlets. I even made sure that all the tables that I have, are all on wheels for the ease of rearranging as needed or to even work outside if the weather permits!
This work space is now my own and I’m incredibly proud of what I accomplished.
I would like to add onto it at some point and/or have another outbuilding to turn into a separate studio/rock room. But that will have to wait for another time.
If you have something that you want to do, then make some plans and start doing it because in the end…the only person that holds you back, is yourself.
Go out there and make YOUR dreams happen!
The Official Website 