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Writer's pictureJennie

Expanding Beyond the Garage

If you've been a long-time viewer of our videos...you've probably heard this a few times! Every single week it's, "Maybe one day we'll expand beyond the garage..."


But when?! When will you finally do it?! Uhh....technically this past week, I guess. It might not be a commercial space yet, but we're one small step closer to our "big goals" (or "pickles" for some of you out there lol)



Let's start at the beginning. Why did we feel like it was time to "expand beyond the garage?". Well, our little house is pretty much packed to the brim. Between 3 people (my brother is out here helping us with the business for a while) and 2 businesses, we really don't have any more space to store anything: lumber, cutting boards, table tops, ....a second Glowforge....NOTHING. We are filled to the brim.


In fact, below is a pretty little chalkboard diagram to show you guys just how much of our house we have left to live in. Samara Table Co. takes up the entire garage, 3/4 of the living room, and a bedroom/bathroom. The Jennie and Davis business takes up a bedroom (that's our studio!). So really, our only living space at the moment is the kitchen and our bedroom.


DON'T WORRY! I'll come back to the fact that we bought a SECOND Glowforge....we're getting there.


This is a diagram of where our woodworking business is in our house.
A diagram of our house and how the rooms are divided up

As much as we wish we could immediately move into a commercial space, we need a bit more cash flow and savings built up for that. The temporary solution we came up with to bridge the gap of full house and commercial space was a storage unit!


It's about 5'x10' and roughly 8' tall....just big enough to house an inventory of table tops, cutting boards, and...our second Glowforge!


We made the decision to pull the trigger on laser #2 after we did a little thought experiment on what might happen if our only laser died. It isn't pretty. There's not another tool in the shop that can do what the laser does - no matter how hard we try. What makes it even scarier is that our whole marketing strategy right now is based on the premise of personalization of boards. If it's such an important tool, we needed to build a little bit of redundancy into the process.


This is our storage unit to fit more table tops in for our woodworking business.
Here it is, guys! The storage unit in all its glory.

This doesn't mean that we use them both at one time, though! We may end up using both once we transition into our commercial space phase, but until then, we just need it as an insurance policy!


So...even though our expansion beyond the garage was only about 5 feet wide and 10 feet deep, it really made a big difference for us. Now we have the capability to take on more large table builds without having to store the parts in what little space we had remaining in the house!


"Big goals, Jennie."







The appearance of U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) visual information does not imply or constitute DoD endorsement.


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!




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