Before I started ripping the cabinets out. Everything in the first image was there normally; everything in the second was pulled off of our out of the larger cabinets making up my workstation. Oddly enough, all of this stuff was used on a day-to-day basis, more or less.
Here is what was left once I tore the cabinets out. Nancy has been disconnected and moved out of the way. The Children have been powered down and stacked against the north wall; Leandra can be seen in the lower left corner. Most of the stuff on the walls is still in place in this image.
Here's the real nightmare in the Lab: the stuff piled up in front of the bar. Two dot matrix printers, a parallel port scanner, and somewhere around thirty separate looseleaf binders, holding everything from old class notes to old documentation and tutorials. A few speakers from my sound system are holding everything more or less in position. As things stand right now you can't even get behind the bar to do anything (even as I write this).
In case you're curious, this was all the stuff that was in the cabinets. Books, games, more books, floppy disks, more games (for two separate systems), floppy disks, more floppy disks, and looseleaf binders out the wazoo. I think there are some (unopened) boxes of 5.25" floppy disks in there, too.
I think this is the neatest part of the whole affair - the stuff piled up near the weight bench. In the back next to the captain's chair is an old Gateway 80486DX2-66 server, which I wound up ditching at Goodwill just to get rid of it. A lot of random stuff accumulated in the kitchen sink (literally speaking), which was part of the countertop I used as a workbench (theoretically; practically it was dead storage), such as a tape deck, tools, books, and many miscellaneous screws and bolts was shoved over here and left until I could figure out what to do with it.
A closeup of the stuff in the northeast corner. You can clearly see many cables, CD-ROMs, books, binder, and a few spare computers in there. Here is a better view.
A closeup of the stuff on the wall. There are multiple newspaper clippings on the Pittsburgh-Cleveland rave scene (412 represent!), posts from long-gone BBSes, odd junk I'd picked up prowling around, and the poster that gets me so many odd looks... if you read the legend (which admittedly I had covered with printouts) it reads "Sometimes abused children grow up to be famous", referring to Ted Bundy, Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, and Charles Manson. It was given to me back in 1997 by the Pittsburgh Child Welfare agency.
And here's the nightmare that is the land behind the bar. There are crates of records back there, lost CDs and audiocassettes, power cables, a few modems, at least a half-dozen backpacks, briefcases, and satches. printers, tubing, a card table.. yes, everything is stacked up waist-high back there.
Once I got stuff cleared out the first thing I did was set up my workstation and bring Leandra back online. This was the first real change that I'd made in the Lab that wasn't destructive (by definition). I needed something to use as a nucleus, to bring everything together around and Leandra was the key to it all.
Installation of the new bookcases and part of the workbench. A rack of CDs can be seen next to the bookcase; the Children are set up beneath the workbench. The second bookcase and more of the workbench can be seen here. There are blank CDs piled up on the workbench next to the scanner, the Children are neatly piled up on the lower rack, the second bookshelf is in place and packed full (three deep, in some places), and the networking hardware is up top. Dataline's workstation is in progress on the far right. Just about everything on the walls have been taken down by now.
A better view of Dataline's workstation. Nancy has been reassembled, connected, and placed next to the bookcase. There's still a little stuff on the east wall in this shot.
This brings us right along to this mess. At this point the job is only half done. A lot of stuff had been moved toward the south wall of the Lab to make room to assemble the bookcases and workstation. Figuring out what to do with everything took a while.
For a while I wound up stacking things in the far corner of the lab to free up floor space. In this image there is a number of boxes and computers piled on the top of the chest of drawers and there is storage media all over the floor, though it's been grouped into a few piles.
An image of the new entertainment center. The rugs have been rolled up and moved out of the way; in the lower left corner can be seen the garbage basket, stuffed to overflowing with old issues of Nintendo Power.
When I installed the home entertainment center I had to move the old bookcases, so I positioned them to either side of the entryway. In this image you can see Dataline's bookshelf next to one of my own. The stairway is still blocked by books, though not nearly as badly as before. In the right-hand side of the second image is the fourth and final bookshelf before installation.
In this picture both bookcases have been reinstalled, on either side of the entryway, and fully populated. Around this time a great deal of stuff's been moved into the garage to make it possible to maneuver more furniture in the Lab.
In the process of cleaning stuff up I managed to whittle down the amount of stuff piled on top of the trunk considerably, mostly by consolidating notes, throwing out old hardcopy, and giving away equipment. Still buried among the printers and scanner are the spare webcam and shortwave scanner, along with an old SCSI enclosure. The two HP Netservers to the left of the trunk are for sale - e-mail me and make an offer.
Even more junk has been gotten rid of by this time. My silver-and-black Doc Martens are in there, along with a pair of workboots, Leandra's UPS, a few random audio cables, and parts of the rug.
Everything's coming together nicely at this point. The entertainment center's functional, my altar is back together, I've gotten rid of the silver inflatable chair (which takes up too damn much room even on a good day), and I've got a nicely swept floor. Yes, I enjoy Justice League.
Perspective shot of the entertainment center, altar, bookcases, and the new cabinet.
