# Setting Up Shop



## ItsForrest (Aug 26, 2019)

I've been off of the forums and haven't made any soap for about a year.

Last year was my first year for selling soap. I did a weekly farmers' market most of the season and a bunch of fall and holiday shows. I learned a lot and I think my product improved by leaps and bounds through the year.  While I agree with the folks that say you shouldn't try to sell until you've made soap for a couple years or more, there are just as many things to learn that you will never know until you start making a bit more volume and selling.

Anyway, back to the subject...
We decided to move from NC to VA and closed on our new-to-us, fixer-upper house a few days before the new year. One of the selling points for the house for me was a good sized basement room that I could set up as a soap shop. We figured we would get a few issues with the new housed fixed up, sell the old house and be back in the soap biz in time to set up in the farmers' market in the new city when it opened in April. Well, it took three months to make the new place livable enough to move in. It took two months to get the old place ready to sell. Now here it is August and I'm finally getting my soap shop put together.

From the listing photos, here is the dark and dingy basement. My dude side likes the wood paneling but it makes the room dark and fresh paint gives it a vastly cleaner feel.










And here it is today, still needing some work but with lots of progress.








Here we have new lighting and electric circuits, brightened up with new paint, asbestos tile removed and new vinyl flooring rolled out, and a couple new workbenches built. Still need to put up a few sheets of drywall where bug-eaten paneling was removed. The ceiling will stay open until we redo a bunch of plumbing, which will probably be a year or so out.

So, we should be organizing and testing new recipes soon and ready to set up for the local market by spring. Next year will be a fun learning year for a new business entity in a new town.


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## Mobjack Bay (Aug 26, 2019)

Wow, that’s a fantastic place for making soap.  So much room.  Enjoy!


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## dibbles (Aug 26, 2019)

It looks fantastic! Congratulations!


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## runnerchicki (Aug 27, 2019)

I love your space. That's going to be a great place to work. Congrats!


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## Lin19687 (Aug 29, 2019)

I am so jealous, Looks Great.
I would suggest putting in more outlets and upping the circuit breaker for more even power instead of the strip.  Just a safety thing and if you expand you can do multiple things on separate outlets then over loading one.


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## ItsForrest (Aug 29, 2019)

Lin19687 said:


> I am so jealous, Looks Great.
> I would suggest putting in more outlets and upping the circuit breaker for more even power instead of the strip.  Just a safety thing and if you expand you can do multiple things on separate outlets then over loading one.



In one word: Yes.

There were some compromises in setting up the room but the one outlet feeding the two strips is a new, dedicated 20 amp circuit pulled direct from the new 200 amp breaker box. This was an absolute necessity since about 80% of all the lights and outlets in the house were all daisy chained off of one 15amp circuit when we started. We did separate out some of that and converted all the lighting to LED to reduce load on what was left on that circuit. This house is ~65 years old and has been added onto at least three times. From the look of things when we open stuff up, there was a lot of do-it-yourself work here. Mostly well put together but everything demands a close look when we get into things.

My thinking for shop power was that this is going to be a one man show for the foreseeable future so, even though there are a bunch of places to plug stuff in, there will only be one thing going at a time. I will either be melting oils in the microwave, stick blending or whatever. I just hate dragging cords across the length of the bench and/or plugging and unplugging for each operation. If I ever have someone helping me, there is a second new 20amp circuit on the opposite wall so we can set up another work bench maybe for packaging, sealing shrink wrap and such.

The original plan was to totally strip the room down to the concrete walls and put in more circuits and outlets but making the main house livable stole a lot of the planned budget for that.


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## Nanette (Aug 29, 2019)

Just reading about what youve done is exhausting...I so admire your energy and dedication to making an awesome space from a fixer upper..soaping room/factory looks great! You will be a great success, I just know it!


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## Sharee (Aug 30, 2019)

KDP said:


> You have a fantastic lab! Wishing you the best in your new place!


Ho did you upload your images? Im trying to do that. Are they jpg.. pgn?.. resized?


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## ItsForrest (Aug 30, 2019)

Sharee said:


> Ho did you upload your images? Im trying to do that. Are they jpg.. pgn?.. resized?



Go down to bottom right of the reply window. There are three buttons: Post Reply, Upload a File, and More Options...
Use the Upload a File button. Then you can choose whether the image will display full size in the message automatically or f you want to post it as a thumbnail that the reader has to click on to see it full size.


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## ItsForrest (Aug 30, 2019)

My images are jpg I believe. I just post them as they come from my iPhone camera.


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## Lin19687 (Aug 31, 2019)

Lol on the kitty...

I see what you did now. I didn't look hard enough at first.
I know first hand bad wiring
Do just found that even though it is just me I would love to be able to run the microwave while SB some oils together. If you kwim.
Still looks awesome


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## srenee (Sep 2, 2019)

ItsForrest said:


> I've been off of the forums and haven't made any soap for about a year.
> 
> Last year was my first year for selling soap. I did a weekly farmers' market most of the season and a bunch of fall and holiday shows. I learned a lot and I think my product improved by leaps and bounds through the year.  While I agree with the folks that say you shouldn't try to sell until you've made soap for a couple years or more, there are just as many things to learn that you will never know until you start making a bit more volume and selling.
> 
> ...


This is awesome! I love the spaciousness of it all. Bright and cheery! We had a basement for our workshop but it now floods after Hurricane Florence damaged our home. I hope you have a sump pump in there just in case of flooding.


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## Megan (Sep 6, 2019)

Beautiful workspace! It is my dream that within a couple years we are building a two story garage/workshop and I love to see what others have done.


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## ItsForrest (Sep 7, 2019)

Thanks for the encouraging comments. I do feel very fortunate that we have the space and the resources to put this space together.

Finally, after too many months, I got to make a couple batches of olive oil soap in the new shop. 
Now I get to make a couple big orders of fresh oils and build up some inventory. I think I'm a bit late to take proper advantage of the X-mas rush this year but I'll be ready to go all in to sell soap in the new year.

There are two things that I really need to sort out before making any volume of soap. I need a work station with ventilation to pull out lye fumes and I need a box for gelling.


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## maya (Sep 8, 2019)

Thats a gorgeous space! Thanks for sharing!


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