Where We Work

Though I've mentioned that we are building out trailer in the back yard and you've caught some glimpses of it and the garage in some posts, I thought it might be fun to do a short post on where we work.

Darrell and I live on the East Side of Providence, Rhode Island.  It is a pretty densely populated neighborhood with a mix of multi-family apartments and condos and single-family homes.  The neat part is that it is an old city and most of the houses were built before the 1920's... ours was built in 1900 according to the Providence assessor's database.  Though we are both itching to move back to Berkshire County where we both grew up, we have loved living here and love the area.

We were very lucky when finding our apartment that it came with parking in the two car garage behind the house.  This gives us the perfect space to store our building supplies and tools among our landlords stuff.  Though the majority of or power tools live in Darrell's trunk so they are safer and we don't have to lug them up and down to our 2nd floor apartment.

A newer photo of the garage with the trailer in it.

What the garage typically looks like.

Most of the stuff if the garage is our landlords.  Before the project we shifted some stuff around and took over five of the cubes on the shelving unit and a small bit of space on one of the lowest hanging shelves.

Supplies on the shelves and some plywood to skin the inside of the hatch.

Leftover wood and partially completed doors.

Darrell's trunk has looked like this since January!

Next to the garage is the tiny yard where we park the trailer.  We were a little worried at having it out in the open at first (we do live in a city after all) but you can't see the yard from the street and our downstairs neighbor literally parks his car in a spot blocking the yard.  We keep a hitch lock on the it, but even if we didn't, as long as he's parked there, there's no way for someone to move the trailer out of the yard.

Our tiny yard as seen from our kitchen window.

As far as protecting the trailer from the weather, we purchased an inexpensive folding canopy from Harbor Freight to provide some shelter.  We also have an enormous tarp we use to wrap everything up.  Earlier in the winter we had this tarp over the canopy to create a tent, but once the walls were up, we started wrapping the trailer instead and sometimes lowering the canopy.  Because the large tarp was rater old and a tad leaky, we also have a second smaller tarp underneath for some added protection.

Canopy

Tarp #1

Tarp #2

Done!

And that's it!  The toughest part is keeping things organized between the garage, yard, cars and apartment so that we can find things.  There is no overnight street parking in Providence, so we also have to make sure everything completely put away every night so we can fit both cars in the garage.  It definitely has its challenges, but overall our space has worked out great.  Moral of the story, you don't need a large space or dedicated garage to build your trailer.  You can build it just about anywhere!