If you’ve watched or scrolled past any of our content lately (ehhh…like in the last 8 months I guess…) you’ll probably see one recurring theme in all of it – WE’RE MOVING! Yep. We both got brand new jobs and we are packing up our entire lives and moving across the country. Isn’t that a bit crazy, you say?? We just got our ideal shop set up and a solid customer base in our area….
Well, folks…these jobs are PART-TIME. That’s right. That means we will have twice the time to put towards building our woodworking business and creating content. We decided to take the plunge and snatch an opportunity for us both to have a much lighter schedule in order to make this woodworking business thing our main focus.
But amongst all this excitement is a lot of work and a lot of planning on how exactly we want to do this. Do we want to rent a trailer? Rent a truck? Buy a trailer? What will all fit in a trailer versus a truck? Will our entire home AND our entire shop fit into 2 vehicles and a trailer? And here’s the big one…
Will we have to get rid of some tools?!?! (slight gasp.)
Well, I’ll be THAT person and spoil it for you up-front (I know, I’m the literal worst), YES we did have to get rid of some tools because we ended up purchasing the trailer seen above. It really didn’t end up being as difficult to decide or execute on as we thought it would be, though. We decided to set up a system to prioritize which tools would be best to sell and buy again once we get to our new home and which tools would be worth the trailer space to take with us. Essentially, the ones we kept had to satisfy at least 2 out of 3 different requirements:
They had just been upgraded to a higher quality brand/style
We use them at least once in about 90% of our projects
We would need/really want them immediately for the first job we got
If they didn’t satisfy 2/3, they got a new home with some of our friends who also do a lot of woodworking. So which tools were they?? Which ones were deemed worthy of our extremely limited and coveted trailer space?!
The Grizzly Table saw. This baby satisfied all 3 of those requirements right off the bat. We use it for pretty much every single project we make for clients and we just upgraded it from our Ridgid table saw. It was a must for our first job in our new shop. Wanna check it out for yourself? Click here!
Miter saw AND miter saw station. I’m sure to a lot of you woodworkers it makes sense why we would want to take our miter saw: it doesn’t take up much space, it’s used in almost every build, it’s extremely versatile, and the quality of cut is much better than that of a circular saw or jigsaw. But the part you may be caught on is why we took the miter saw station as well. Basically, we built that thing to be the exact length we wanted to support cutting long planks, provide ample storage, and we dialed the table heights in to fit our specific miter saw. If you’re wanting to check out the exact saw we have, click here!
Sure, we could just build a new station (heck, we made an entire video on how to do that: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ZKucrV_NIA), but we also didn’t end up keeping any workbenches….which means we would end up creating said miter saw station on the floor or our garage and hoping it all worked out as perfectly as it did when we had an entire shop set up…..
Yeah. We weren’t holding our breath either. So we decided to keep it and use the storage underneath to hold some of our smaller boxes from inside the house. This will allow us to unpack the entire station and table saw and be ready to build some nice workbenches – after that, we would basically be ready to go for our first project within a couple weeks of moving in. Time is money, people!!
DeWalt planer (check it out here!). It satisfied 2/3 requirements…and also fit into a box perfectly….a very large box….but a box all the same!
Fuji Mini-mite paint sprayer (check it out here!). This one hit all 3 requirements and also doesn’t take up much space in general. A perfect candidate for the trailer. It’s also a huge time saver on finish application – and we’re all about conserving time…and therefore labor costs for our clients!
Makita track saw (check it out here!). Again…it hit all 3. And we also secretly (not-so-secretly) LOVE our track saw. It’s amazing and we waited way too long to finally invest in it. If you check out our post on “Our Tools and How They Launched Us” we talk a little more about that.
So those were really the “big” tools that ended up making it. Obviously all of our smaller stuff (drills, impact drivers, Kreg jigs, hand planes) were no issue at all to pack due to their size and weren’t even on our radar to sell.
Well now you’re probably wondering what we DIDN’T take! We unfortunately had to leave behind our drill press and band saw. Those were the 2 bigger tools that we decided we just didn’t use enough to make it worth the trailer real estate. We also were wanting to upgrade our bandsaw in the near future anyway – so it was actually perfect timing to sell that one.
All in all, we had to give up some tools as well as quite a bit of furniture – but we’re no less excited to start this new shop and take you along with us on the journey. Next up: rebuilding workbenches, a kitchen table, a coffee table, a couple end tables, a chest of drawers, and a coat rack. Needless to say, we will have no shortage of content….
Check out the video of our whole rent vs. buy a trailer ordeal below: (yeah…it was a bit of an ordeal. That or we’re just dramatic.)
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This post may contain affiliate links for products we used to create this project! If you’d like to check them out, we do get a small percentage of the sale and they are of no extra cost to you! It all goes towards supporting the content creation of Jennie and Davis. BUT – we do not take tool sponsorships and there were no tool endorsements. Just our honest opinions!