I mentioned buying us more time yesterday but did not say how much. Here is our present guess or goal, whichever you prefer, and a time frame for moving. No promises, just guesses.

• All personal property removed from the premises by Feb 7th. Any personal property not removed by February 7th becomes the property of TechShop unless specific arrangements have been made. We have too much stuff to move already. Please help us by removing all your stuff.
• TechShop Durham building totally empty and cleaned by February 15th.
• All major building and preparations to the TechShop RDU building completed by February 28th.
• Soft opening on March 1st then grand opening one year to the day of our first opening on March 21st or 23rd. March 21st was our celebration and the 23rd was actual opening for business.

We can think about this more as it gets closer. Of course, if we can do it sooner, all the better. The more help we get the faster it could go.

The roads are getting better and are now passable between the two locations however... we are not ready to start moving stuff into the building since it will make it harder to build the walls and paint and all that. Trust me, we do not want all our stuff in place when the sheet rock guys put up the rock and start sanding the seams.

So, thanks to the suggestion from one of our members, we are thinking we might complete the move in a slightly different way than originally planned. Here's what we are now thinking. And of course, this could change at any given moment. (:^)

We are thinking about loading up a few trailers. You know, 18 wheeler enclosed trailers that are used to haul goods across country. Anyway, we would load them up and move them to the new location. Once the building is ready, we would move the stuff out of the trailers and into the building. It all depends on the price and we will find out about that Wednesday. I should let you know the decision in tomorrow's blog entry.

Wallace Newton is heading up the "moving stuff" part of this and can be contacted by email at wallace@trimminc.com Please contact him if you want to help with this part of the move.

Matt Rouse is heading up the "wall framing" part of this and can be contacted by email at ratmouse@charter.net or by phone at 919-219-7104. Please contact him if you want to help with this part of the move.

At TechShop Durham, we offered private spaces at $2 per square foot per month. At TechShop RDU, we will be offering spaces for rent at $1 per square foot per month. I am drawing up the plans for building now and have already promised all the larger spaces I set aside in my first drawings. If you would be interested in renting a space at TechShop RDU, let me know what approximate size and I can plan it into the design. Let me know if you require a window or not. Right now, I have several rooms about 8' x 8' for around $65 a month and a couple around 100sf for $100. So please email me at scott@techshopdurham.com if you are interested in renting a room type space.

There will also be cubbyhole type spaces and sheet plywood spaces and long stock spaces but we're not talking about those right now. Those will be topics for another conversation.

Thanks,

Scott (Read more)

I got a couple of emails saying the new location wasn't on the website, so I have updated the "Location and Hours" page to show both the old and new addresses. We will update it again with a map soon.

We will tell everyone as soon as we have the new location open for business. We are expecting it to be some time in February. More than that,I just do n ot know right now.

Scott

A lot got done today.

We had several volunteers packing up a lot of stuff while I sat on my duff working on the layout with the help of several guys. Lots of input and lots of good ideas. Of course, I did get a lot of my office packed up too, but mostly I worked on the layout. I like what we have for upstairs and will work on the downstairs more tomorrow. We're going to need quite a few walls built, electrical run and plumbing too. If you want to volunteer to do any of these, you will be welcomed. If you want to get paid, we can talk about that too. But we do need to get experienced people working on this so it doesn't take a long time to finish.

Some of the roads are like nothing happened, while some are still almost impassable. Our route from TechShop Durham to TechShop RDU is via TW Alexander. That road is still pretty bad as of Sunday night. Not sure I think it's a great idea to start moving the big stuff yet unless they plow it overnight, but if anyone feels like hauling a truck or car load of stuff over on Monday, we'll get the new place opened up. Still, I'd say not until noon or so, but if you want to show up earlier, there's still a lot to pack.

Peter wanted me to write a new task list for packing, but since we are shutting everything down as of now, pretty much anything you see that you can pack and get ready to move is OK with me.

I'll post this on the front page and send out an email so everyone knows what is happening. As of now, all memberships are frozen and all equipment is off line. We will start them up again some time after we get things going at the new location. Thanks for the offer, but no, I don't need a place to store the laser cutter until we get moved.

The more people that help us move and set up, the faster we will be back up and running at the new location, so if you have some time, we sure would appreciate the help.

Thanks,

Scott (Read more)

Peter showed up but he has experience driving in these conditions. But if no one shows up by 2PM he's going home.

Erick and I might go down for a while. Maybe.

We'll try again tomorrow.

Thanks,

Scott

OK, today's news is that we are in rapid exit mode.

If you have any personal things here, you need to take them as quickly as possible.

If you can help us pack and move, now is the time!

Don't take any chances with the weather, but if you can get through and move some stuff it would be great.

Thanks,

Scott

We had a meeting tonight at the new location. I think everyone really likes the new space.

One of the topics that came up was a way for everyone to get the news about what is happening here at TechShop. The emails have not succeeded. I never thought the blog would be that great because not everyone would see it. But hey, if I start writing almost daily, perhaps it will get more interest. So here goes. I'll promote this one to the front page so more people will see it, but usually I think I will just post to my blog. Let's see how this works.

There is a lot of work to be done now that we are moving. Here's kind of a schedule, but it is subject to change and I can promise it will change, so check often if you want to know what is current. (Read more)

This time it's official! TechShop Durham has signed a lease and will be moving immediately.

The new location is almost exactly between Durham and Raleigh. We could almost throw a rock to the airport. The actual address is 5905 Triangle Drive, Raleigh, NC 27617 (map).

You are invited to come check out our new location and help us make plans for the new building. We will be there Thursday evening January 28th at 7PM. There are no chairs or tables there yet, so if you want to sit down, you will need to bring a folding chair or something. Of course, you could always grab a chair or stool here at TechShop and carry it on over to the new location if you want.

We will need to do a lot of work to make this building into a TechShop and will be happy to accept any offers to help us do that. There will be walls to build, walls to tear down I think, and electrical and air lines to run. We will be pulling up a bunch of carpet and tiles from the floor. Deja Vu. Anyone remember that from the first one? I sure do. We won't be doing it the same way this time though. Not sure just how it will go, but we can talk about it Thursday night. That's tomorrow as I write this.

We have held back a little on packing until we knew we had a place but now that we have, it's time to pack it all up! If you can help, now is the time! Come on down.

Sorry for the short notice again, but we need to get moving as quickly as possible. (pun intended)

Hope to see you there Scott,

Scott

PS. We are still offering the $39 gift cards but this promotion will end soon. Now that you know where we will be this would be a perfect time to grab some of these "super deal" cards and give them to friends or use one yourself if you are not a member yet. Hurry, it really will end soon. (Read more)

As we told you, the deal for leasing the location on Glenwood has vaporized, but we have another location and will be signing a lease soon. This time I'll wait for the papers to be signed before announcing the location.

Scott

Hi everyone,

I am trying to find the words. This is the hardest letter I have written in a long time. We have had our location pretty much stolen from us. We had a verbal agreement and were just waiting to sign the lease. We found out the landlord has accepted an offer from a more established company. That's about all the info we got.

While disappointing, this will not stop us. There are several other locations we can take and will decide on one very quickly. We are weighing our options and working hard to open or re-open discussions with several other property reps. There are several spaces that want us and are willing to negotiate a good deal for us to get us into their properties.

We will certainly keep you abreast of all that is happening.

Thanks,

Scott

[The location has changed. Please see TechShop Signs Lease for up to date information.]

We are excited to announce our new location to you. Our new address will be 8724 Glenwood Ave, Raleigh, NC 27617 It's still centrally located for easy access from Raleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill and Cary.

Here's a map. It's the building closest to the street.

Several people have asked how they can help. First, we need a lot of boxes. If you have any, we could use them. All sizes I suppose, but 1 foot square to 3 feet square should be very useful sizes. We appreciate any you can drop off. (Read more)