Moving to Silicon Valley: Part III - Rebuilding the 304

The 304 in Stamford

Building a new bike work stand was done, and now I needed to reassemble the 304 - or the cabinet made up of small, plastic parts drawers used to hold the world’s most organized collection of clutter.

In Stamford I used a collection of nine metal two-drawer cabinets as the base of the cabinet standing on frame I welded. The frame was recycled in Stamford, so I resorted to using an industrial shelving unit as a base and reasoned I could arrange the two-drawer cabinets beneath however I wanted. 

That’s the thing about workshops: ideally, everything should either be modular or, like with the Part II post, be on wheels.

The first thing I needed to do was replace the countertop. Just like I did with the last 304: I checked the As-Is section of Ikea. But instead of going to the Ikea in New Haven, I went to the one in Palo Alto. It was there I found an 8-foot piece for $45. As luck would have it, it matched the fantastic $5 Connecticut yard sale find rolling hospital table. So I made sure the section of the 304 where my feet would go would be wide enough to accommodate it.

Speaking of $5 yard sale finds: the speaker stands I found at another CT tag sale - which were quite useful when making the Bikeducken during the DIYBIKING.COM Salutes the Cargo Bike special - were perfect for installing shelves: I just leveled the shelf, set up a bracket as an extra set of hands, and it all stayed nice and even during the install.

Putting up the cabinets themselves was easy even though I knew I’d one day have to go through all the drawers and rearrange everything since the movers in Connecticut packed some of the units sideways for no reason. 

Yes, it’s a grisly mess - what with bodies lying everywhere and all - but it looks good against the new countertop, doesn’t it?

Now that I’ve put the LED shop light in I can now say it is ready to go. 

It was good for morale alone just to get this up. Now anything I need from small wood screws to shower curtain rings to HO scale miniatures to batteries to shark shaped valve caps are in easy reach. I’m feeling a lot more normal now…and the sight of it is putting me in the mood to build something. Hope you find that mood too. Thanks for reading and thanks for riding. 

Follow me on Twitter @michaelknorris