THE END
It seems weird to start our story of TAZ Boards with the dismantling of our wood shop, but the end of one thing is always the beginning of another. Since the next story hasn’t quite begun yet, we may as well start at the end of the last one.
We took down our 10’ x 20’ wood shop the week of June 10, 2019. It was one of the last things we had to do in order to move out of our small, dark, cold house in Central California. The bright spots of living there included: the babies, Bobo and Zuzu; our semi-productive garden in the back yard, each other, and our studio + wood shop where we did all the work for Tudo Azul. But we complained too much about the weather, which was a coldish 63 degrees with fog most days, we were frustrated by the fact that we couldn’t keep grass growing because the d%#& moles had 50 trillion miles of tunnels under the town, and we couldn’t stand the house that we paid too much to live in for too little modernization and upkeep.
Central California was a fine place for us to meet and fall in love and a fine place to start and grow our business. But we were excited to leave so we could start over fresh somewhere new and exciting, with real, hot summers, lush green lawns, and a bigger, nicer, brighter place to live and expand our business.
Taking down the plywood walls that separated our one-car car-port-turned-wood-shop from the neighbor’s connecting one was easy. Thinking ahead, TJ had screwed them in when we put them up, so it was a simple matter of unscrewing them with one of his five electric screwdriver thingys. (I’m not going to even pretend I know the names of half of his tools.)
Then there was all the wood shop equipment to worry about. We had a U-Haul trailer with no ramp, which meant big strong TJ and less strong, littler EV (that’s me) had to move and lift hundreds of pounds into and out of the trailer, two feet off the ground. No small feat when you’re staring at a table saw, jointer, planer, CNC router, and more. I was a little afraid one of us was going to get very hurt. (I didn’t want to write about any of this until we were done and jinxing the process was impossible.)
Unfortunately for the sake of a good story, no one got hurt during the move. Fortunately, for the sake of our health and well-being, no one got hurt during the move. I only suffered a few bruises on my legs, and scratches on my arms that are mostly gone now, and TJ mostly only suffered a sore back every night from doing the majority of the heavy lifting. (I appreciate you, babe!) We successfully packed everything into a storage unit… Okay, two storage units. It turns out that we had a lot of stuff.
TJ gave away all of his scrap wood that he had been stockpiling for little projects for the past two and a half years. He also gave away all three of his work benches and two cupboards, and all the piping that made up his dust collection system. Some up-and-coming wood worker sure benefited from our leaving!
We saved some of the choice pieces in storage, as well as brought some smaller pieces with us so we can do a little work even before we get the wood shop set back up.
After a six-day drive across the country with the babies and towing our Sea-Doo Speedster, and with minor travel-related problems such as a broken trailer light and a flat trailer tire, we made it to Virginia.
Next steps? Find a place to live. Bring the rest of our stuff across country to join us. Settle in. Set up the wood shop and studio. Re-open our business and start filling orders!
Interested in getting something from Tudo Azul? Feel free to place an order now to get on our waiting list and be one of the first people to get your order once we get back up and running.
