Anybody else relegated to the basement?

Harriw said:

So... anybody else have wives that don't allow them to sort brass in the family room?

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Before I bought a Shell Sorter, my girls (6, 6, and 8 at the time) and I sorted at the kitchen counter.

And I'm not stuck in the basement. . . I have a shop in the basement. Below-grade is the most expensive, and most under-appreciated, square footage in residential construction.

When I got into reloading, it was in the attached garage (No basements in New Orleans). But, the garage was heated and air conditioned because it was my shop not a place to store street vehicles. The wife complained more about the smell of fiberglass resin than anything else.

Every house since then, we've moved four times since NOLA, has had a reloading room, sometimes in the basement, sometimes in a bonus room over the garage but always climate controlled.

Of course, the wife has her project room as well. Fair trade, eh?

I've never brought reloading work into the living part of the house. All of my reloading and shop spaces have had entertainment piped to them. It keeps the friction down between the rest of the house's inhabitants and me.

Bush Pilot said:

It's where you store crap you bought and had good intentions at the time.

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I grew up with a basement AND an attic as a kid..............nowadays, it is either a garage or a storage outbuilding....................

Relegated to the basement? No, it's just the logical place for me. My wife died last year so I don't have anybody telling me what I can and can't do in my house. That's a small consolation though.

Mmb, sorry for your loss.

I'm also sorry for you loss. The wife and I are getting up there in years and one of my big worries is that I'll outlive her. I will be truly lost if I do.

Back to the basement thing. It's about 6 inches to solid rock under my house so no basement. My stuff is in the garage and not because my wife dictated it. I want it there so no one gets into my stuff. Now that I have two almost teenage great grand daughters that's not working out so well. They are worse than squirrels about getting into whatever they want to get into and know grandpa is all bark and no bite. They do know it's hands off on certain things though unless I'm there to supervise because they can get hurt.

Upstairs is a combo sewing area she isn't using, my home office now that I can't go into the workplace, and my reloading. I tumble brass in the garage, but everything else is upstairs.
Works great to be in a boring meeting and move over to do some reloading tasks

I live by myself and have enough trouble keeping my bench and maintenance area straight without worrying about ruining my couch as well. I am way too messy to bring it to the living room.

My hobbies, at least those that will fit in the house, are in the basement and have been since the mid 1960s. The blacksmith shop is in a separate building. My present basement is one room about 42' X 52' with poured walls. My wife's sewing / quilting area occupies about 2/3 of that space. My space is the other 1/3 that I share with the physical plant - furnace, water heater, water softener, water sulfur treatment equipment, central vac and one sump pump. She also has a sewing room upstairs in the laundry room. We have worked out this equal agreement after over 57 years.

We just bought a new house in North Idaho that has a storage room in the basement, all concrete or block..10x30 that she said I can have or the large shop has a 40' long bench and is plumbed for air. Haven't decided yet but shop has gas heater, full insulation and bench already there. Lots of ventilation for casting too w nearby roll up door.
We are still moving till she retires in December. I have all winter to see how cold it gets in the shop.

I was banished to the basement years ago. I now have a nice shop set up down there and it's my happy place.

When life deals you lemons, just use it to make lemonade

Basically. I’m in the garage. I wanted to move into my crawl space, and I will eventually, but I have to have better control over moisture before I do.

No basement here but I do have my own small room. The Wife don't seem to be bothered about me sorting brass on the island in the kitchen or priming brass as we watch tv. I primed nearly 1000 223's while watching the debate last night! Occasionally she will ask me to vacate the kitchen if she has some project that requires extra counter space. She is a great cook so its smart for me to do as she ask.

No basements here. I miss that about NY and PA; I had great basement setups there.

My wife is pretty good about my using the kitchen bar top for brass sorting and throwing powder, and hand priming in the living room.

I grew up in a house with a large basement, and the corner of that basement was for my hobbies. Slot tracks, train sets, and later model rockets and R/C airplanes. If I lived in that house today, the basement is where I would want my reloading equipment.

The house I live in now does not have a basement. I started out reloading in the spare bedroom, and the wife was fine with that. I ended up getting a 12x20 pre-fab shed. I wired, insulated, and finished the interior, and keep it climate controlled.

In New Mexico, I don't need no garage.....my cars do fine outside in the shade. So it's now my reloading room. But the master bedroom is on top, so I can't explode anything.

My basement is 1/2 workout and 1/2 reloading. Any more equipment and I need more basement.

Everytime my dad would build a new barn or shop my mom would say "you need to clean out the other one". He would always say it was easier to just build another one.

DO NOT BRING RANGE PICKED UP BRASS INTO YOUR HOME WITHOUT SPRAYING IT FOR SPIDERS FIRST.

I used to bring home range brass & store in my basement until I could get time to get it sorted & cleaned. It didn't take two months & I had the worst spider infestation ever. I couldn't keep the cobwebs knocked down fast enough. I had to spray inside & outside to get them knocked down.
Now I put all recovered brass in a plastic coffee cans with a spray of bug spray in each for two days in the garage, just to kill the bugs. Then they don't come into the house until they have been sorted, wet tumbled & dried. It seams the little pieces of gold we love to bring home are also good homes for spiders & other bugs.

I'll get a spare bedroom for reloading gear, if the wife doesn't fill it with more children or grandchildren. The last of our kids just recently moved out on his own so we have 2 bedrooms that aren't being used. I refuse to put expensive guns and reloading gear in my basement, it's about 10 degrees warmer than the outside air temperature and very humid. It's a stone foundation.

I've been doing all of my loading using the dining room table, do e it for years, despite the wifes objections. We've discussed the topic and I'll get one of the walk in closets if the spare bedrooms are needed for family, probably the larger of the 2 because I've already wired it for electric. The only downside is it's next to the bathroom that could introduce a humidity factor. I'd also have to finish it, finishing the closets took a back seat to making the rest of the house livable.

We nought's shell 16vyears ago and it's been a work in progress.

crestoncowboy said:

My basement is 1/2 workout and 1/2 reloading. Any more equipment and I need more basement.

Everytime my dad would build a new barn or shop my mom would say "you need to clean out the other one". He would always say it was easier to just build another one.

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I am pretty sure he was right

I have a sweet basement that I can use to sort brass. Tall ceilings and two spare rooms for my adventures.

As long as I am not adding a mess I can sort brass where ever I want. I can even get her to assist if the brass is clean. My Dad didn't give me a lot of love advice. He simply told me to marry up. Not up as in richer, but to marry better than myself. I took him up and na na na na na na, I get to sort brass where ever I want.

My house has a finished basement that includes a one bedroom apartment where I keep my loading stuff. It's cool in the winter and heated in the winter and dry. Much nicer than the room over our springhouse I used when living at our former residence.

Hi...
I have a 12x12 climate controlled room that I built in my two car garage that is under the bedroom half of the house.
All of my reloading tasks take place in that room.
Three benches dedicated to reloading and one to another hobby...building scale model armored fighting vehicles. To be honest, I haven't built a model in 15 years or more.
I sort brass and tumble it in the garage.

I have a den adjacent to the master bedroom with a large closet that I turned into a library with book shelves. I study military history and paleontology in that room.
I keep my hobbies out of our living space as much as possible. Very rarely I will bring a book out in the living room to read. Now that I am retired that happens less and less. I can spend several hours undisturbed each day studying and researching while my wife is at work if I so choose.

MacAR said:

My guns live in our bedroom. I clean them and work on them in the living room. Mrs. Mac doesn't much care, so long as I clean up after myself. But then we're a touch different than most. We actually live in our house. There are 12 dozen fresh eggs on our kitchen table right now waiting to be sorted tomorrow. She has a large basket full of yarn in the floor next to her. And lastly, there are no less than 800 books in/around our "reading nook" (what's a nook?), both hers and mine. At one point or another, there have been baby chicks and newborn calves in our house, so what's a little gunsmithing?

Mac

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Mac, you sound like my kinda people!