Even though I don't have a basement . . .

Of the 85 million different things that are hard/liberating/challenging/freeing about downsizing from a full-sized home to a condo, the basement was about 27% of those things.  (Even though I'm a mathematician, I'm not at all good with numbers, so take those figures with a grain of salt).

The basement is not only a place for storing a bunch of things that it's easy to forget about, combined with those items about which I pretend, "I'll use this someday", it was also, for me, a notable area for some of the hobbies that I loved.  The basement in our row home contained -- most significantly of all -- a woodworking bench with all my tools, and large shelves for holding my canning jars.  Getting rid of the "I'd forgotten about this" clutter was a chore, but it was a chore that I felt good about.  Saying good-bye to my woodworking bench, on the other hand, felt like leaving a huge part of my life behind.

So imagine my amazement and jubilation when I discovered that, in the bowels of condo that I moved into, a bunch of residents had cobbled together a wood-working shop of their own.  Not only is there a space here in which I can do woodworking, but there are fancier tools than I have ever used in my life, and a community of people who hang out there to give advice and to chat.  

The most impressive thing I've built so far is a set of canning jar shelves that go up in the condo. 

The shelves, nearly done, sitting right outside the
woodworking shop, where one of my sawdust-is-glitter buddies
is hard at work on his own project. 

I made this under the tutelage of a regular hanger-out in the workshop: a guy named Ted. He refused to let me throw together a set of ugly shelves, and instead showed me how to use chop saws, table saws, routers, dremels, and more.  He even drove me to the hardware store in his pick-up to help me select plywood and other supplies (things that don't fit in my own little hatchback).

And the shelves came out really nicely! 

The shelves in the condo, 
doing their job of holding canning jars.

This beast is 7 feet high, 6 feet wide, and 1 foot deep.  Most of the shelves are adjustable.

I'm loving this thing I made (really, that Ted tutored me through making), but even more I love that it represents a community-shared-space where I'm going to get to have even more sawdust-inspired fun. I thought my circular-saw days were behind me, and instead a whole new world of amazing tools and the projects they inspire lies before me.