I could have cut the notches in the longerons, but I've hit a point where I really need more space in the garage. It's only 19' deep, but a little more than 3 feet of that is totally wasted with this crappy, poorly built shelf system in the back. Whoever built this garage has absolutely no regard for quality. While I do rent the house, I take some liberties that my landlord has extended me (he even offered that I could cut a door in the back of the garage and move the compressor out back).
Anyway, I decided that the left half of the shelving system (if you can really call it a system) could be "extracted" without damaging anything, and it would free up enough space so that the fuselage will be able to sit tail-to-firewall within the confines of the garage, no problem. The only issue was that I had already spent a bunch of time building a compressor enclosure this past summer!
This sucker keeps the oil-free (read: loud) compressor very muffled, and I even built in a "fart fan" system for optionally cooling the compressor. By the way, this system worked excellent! Whenever the temp inside the box got over about 90F, I just flipped on the fart fan and it cooled it down into the 70s within a few minutes. It worked great.
But...it has to go. I have to look at this as an opportunity more than a loss, I guess. Once the stupid freakin' shelf is out of there I can build a REAL full enclosure. I can also raise the compressor up a little bit and install one of those automatic drain valves I've been eyeing for months now (but have been steering away from since the compressor was already boxed in, etc.).
Ok, so anyway, cleared off the shelf (I have just enough alternate shelf space for all the random fuselage parts still left) . I dismantled the enclosure and all of the electrical wiring...hadn't actually seen the compressor in months!
Next I ripped the shelf out of there piece by piece. Now I've got this whole corner freed up. I just bought myself another 35 square feet or so!
I'm exhausted. Tomorrow I'll work on designing and maybe building the new compressor enclosure. Once all this crap is squared away, then I can move the aft fuselage back there and position the center fuselage and all that crap. I figure it will be at least a few days of shop work before I get back to productively building the plane.