If you’re interested in doing things yourself, but you don’t feel as though you’ve gotten a solid start at it yet, then you’ll definitely want to check out the latest video from Brick House Builds. To celebrate reaching the 50,000-subscriber milestone on YouTube, BJ, the one-man force behind BHB, threw a viewer poll up on social media to see what his viewers wanted to do to celebrate.
As it turns out, a bunch of viewers asked about the BHB origin story, as well as what an average day-in-the-life is like. This video is a combination of both of those things—and if you want a bit of insight into the mental processes of a consummate DIYer, then you’ve come to the right place.
The name of the shop, Brick House Builds, came from the previous location—which was, in fact, inside a solid brick building with a shop on the first floor. That space was considerably larger than the one-car garage that BHB operates out of now, which is why he also has a separate warehouse where he keeps all the parts and project bikes that aren’t on the lift at any given time.
Of course, having such a limited amount of space in the actual shop area means that things have to be carefully, intentionally organized—and that’s where things get interesting. As BJ gives a guided tour of the area and shares his organizational systems for everything from drills to wires to the receiver he’s installed to swap in a vise, pipe bender, and other tools he doesn’t use every day, it’s clear that a lot of thought went into maximizing what he could do with the space available. Necessity, as has often been said, is the mother of invention—and maximizing every little bit of space (including the corners and eaves) is what makes this shop possible.
The thing about organizing a given space that no one really tells you is that you’re going to spend a lot of time finding the right solutions to fit both your area and your available budget. If you’re a handy sort of person (which we’ll assume that you are, if you’re trying to organize a DIY space), then you may be able to build your way into an organizational system that makes you happy—such as BJ illustrates here.
The important thing to realize is that it’s a process, and that it will probably never be finished. Instead, it will continue to evolve, as both your skills and your needs do the same thing. Once you accept that it’s an ongoing process, chances are excellent that you’ll be more pleased with what you’ve managed to accomplish.
Beyond the workshop, we also get a bit of insight into what it’s like to be a self-employed person with multiple branches of small business activity. From selling parts online, to being the exclusive North American distributor for NWT Cycletronic’s parts line (and providing tech support for it), to editing his YouTube videos and also finding time to work on the bikes, everything more or less flows within a set schedule so that everything gets some attention.
If you’re the type of person who grew up taking things apart, putting them back together, and with a seemingly boundless curiosity about how things work—this is the video for you. It’s stuff like this channel that makes us glad the Internet exists.
