I'm 74 year old and from Toronto Ontario Canada I have worked in the furniture manufacturing for 50 years and I have worked in many companies like yours you are doing great and I love watching you because I miss working ! Thanks for sharing your video!

Glad to see the "Empire" is coming together so nicely...Congratulations!

Everything is high, dry, and safely stored with the forklift easily accessible. Being nicely organized will make it a joy to work in the barn.

26:40 I also remember where every piece of wood in my shop came from. Can appreciate this video series in the sense of wanting to make more content but also having a lot of work that needs to get done.

After years of watching you and wanting to drive to Minnesota and clean/organize your actual woodshop for you, it’s interesting to see how much more organized you are with your business

Setting up racking by yourself is no easy task. Kudos 👏

Hey Matt, GREAT take on the rent v own aspect. If you did not rent, you would not have the "own". Back in the day (I an old) I would advise my clients to let the business tell you when to; buy a new truck, get bigger space, new equipment etc and having watched you throughout the years - you NAILED it. AND balancing a wife then family, you can be very proud of what you have accomplished. You, Steve Ramsey and Jay Bates were my first woodworking channels and I have gained so much - thanks again! !! !!!

Great job Matt, your plan is all coming together now. Now your viewers that proposed a pass through door on the opposite wall (including me)can realize how much that end wall space was needed for your plans. It certainly would have been a nice treat to drive straight through if ever needed but not feasible because of all the wall space you have already absorbed for your needs.

Gets the shop setup before the house. Good man 👌

Super impressed with how quickly you got that whipped into working order. What a great workshop, and how cool to have it on your own property. Nicely done.

Matt may be considered trim and lean, but one thing for sure, he’s a hard working machine.

I really like this style video, talking over your working.

This is the video I’ve been waiting for since you started constructing the building. It is the most interesting to me. And that is how you planned your layout. You’re very organized and I’m the same way. Great job on your part Matt. Excellent work and I’m happy for you.

Good morning and happy barn raising (building)!

The shop turned out great! You may want to consider installing ceiling fans up in the rafter bays to push the heat back down. I think a lot of the heat being generated by your radiant floor is just naturally rising and sitting at the top of your building. When you look at the drone footage you can see that the snow has melted from your shop roof but not the other buildings on your property, this could be an indication.

It's funny seeing the bandsaw mill on the gantry. If you're cold they're cold - bring them inside!

Congratulations Matt on getting the barn organized. An organized shop is a safer shop. All the best in 2023!

Have you thought about getting an assistant/s for your shop to assist you in your chair kits and others projects? Might consider visiting your local high school or technical college and offer working apprenticeships to their shop students. They gain real world knowledge in woodworking industry in a relaxed environment with a great teacher like you, Matt.

Wow, Matt. It's looking good in there. Racks are definitely a good thing to have, even if you don't use them immediately, they'll always come to be used eventually as you get the space oriented & established.

Loved the organizing.

Your dream is coming to fruition Matt congratulations on all the hard work paying off😊👍😊👍

You will never be done. Only temporarily believing you are. Now is the time to make the big stuff happen. It’s the journey. Never wish the time away it will pass no matter your intentions or emotional state of mind. It’s all a learning process. And mastery comes over time. I have watched your evolution from the beginning. Not viewing religiously, but always returning to see what you are up to. You have come a long way. And you still have your little laugh punctuating your narrative and ever increasing skill set. Nice journey you are on.

I'm loving the new building. When we wired my new shop which is 30x48 we setup three rows of lights. Each string is five 8' strip fixtures which are essentially a fluorescent style fixture but without the ballast. Each fixture has four 4' Keystone Drive Drive LED blubs. So 60 tubes in 1440 square feet. I love it. Nice to know when they die and they will in my lifetime its a simple bulb swap. The whole lot runs on less than 1100 watts.

Very impressive business model Matty. Really appreciate how you’re sharing your thought process and your successes and challenges. Fair play and the very best of luck moving forward.

You probably already know this but it is super important to securely fasten free standing pallet shelving to the floor. They fall much easier than you could imagine.

I totally agree with your chair reasoning. I can make tables with pleasure but chairs I haven't even attempted.

Hey Matt, Your videos should be required viewing for shop teachers and students around the country. Your presentations are so unpretentious and believeable. You have a gift few have and needs to be shared, taught to the next generation. I could go on for hours but in the short run I just want to say Thank You for giving a 71 yr old guy some hope for the future. God Bless You and your family! Donovan too!

I HAVE BEEN SUBSCRIBED TO YOU FROM BUILDING YOUR TRAILER AND SAW.I HAVE LOOKED FORWORD TO YOUR PROGRES EVERY WEEK FOR WHAT MUST BE A FEW YEARS YOUR NEW HOME,YOUR BUISNES ARE A REAL JOY TO WATCH AND I LOOK FORWORD TO THE NEXT YEARS TO COME MANY MANY THANKS.JACK.

Matt: Do you ever rest? You wear me out just watching, but it is so interesting and fun I can't stop watching. Great job as always.

Raising the bar for all of us, thanks Matt!

I was surprised a while back that you had a finance degree (rather than some sort of engineering degree that I had assumed) and I really like hearing your takes on finances and financial decisions...

So many things to enjoy watching your videos, Matthew. This one is particularly fun because you're organising a mountain of stuff, moving from a higher entropy state to a lower entropy state. It's like a giant board game. 🤓 All done with your usual useful commentary and good humour!

Yes Matt waiting for you to start on the house again

Part of the reason it seems, and is brighter in the shop is the walls, and ceiling are white. In the barn they are sort of off yellow/applesauce color. True, the lights aren't as dense, but the wall color isn't helping. All of the dark wood along the other wall is sucking up even more light. One thing that occurred to me as I watched the last part is, if you aren't going to put stuff between bays in the bottom part of the trusses (there are boards in the middle of some bays now), you might consider brighter flood style lights pointing up into the ceiling so the light bounces off the light colored ceiling, and washes more space. It might give a brighter more uniform amount, and be easier to do then adding lots more of the 8' LED strips.

Matt you are one hard working dude. I admire your work ethic. I also really enjoy these videos. Thanks for sharing!

Have you looked at a standup upright electric forklift? They even make them that you can ride up with your load. They can turn in their own length.

Come a long way from when I first started watching your videos, way back when you built your big mill. 2014/15

I am not a structural engineer, but did design a lot of racked warehouse space. There is a significant amount of structural integrity for the racking which comes from bolting them to the floor, especially if you do not use the bottom beams to keep the legs from splaying. Just a thought that you may want to keep the upper loads to fluffier stuff and the heavier stuff towards the bottom if you don't want to bolt to the pipe heated floor. Great content, thanks.

From having no building to a working shop in a short period of time is great

I started watching your videos about a year ago. What attracted me was the woodworking and the urban logging. Plus the sawing videos are great for autohypnosis. I saw your "A Day in the Woods" videos. On a different channel, I saw a video I call "Vandal with a chainsaw". A helicopter drops him on a mountainside. His goal is NOT to harvest trees. It is to kill and destroy every tree he sees. If a tree he fells shatters into pieces, he doesn't care. He is pissed that the EPA doesn't let him kill the saplings. He just wants to see stumps as far as the eye can see. Next is the sawing. The commercial videos are interesting. I liked the company that makes LVL. They take old rubber trees that no longer produce. The bark is used to power all the machinery. They peel the tree for the veneer. And then use the veneer to make LVL. The worst is a video about a company trying to saw a 30" pine log with essentially a large table saw. The blade is only about 18" high. They peel the log like you would a carrot. Constantly whittling away until they end up with a cant their saw can handle. Since they are constantly moving the log, many shavings are triangular. The faces of their boards are not parallel and the thicknesses at the ends are different. I love that you built your own sawmill to handle large urban logs. Urban logging saves wood that would otherwise just be burned up. My favorite plant is one outside a big city. They got a contract to process the city sewage. The methane from the settling tanks is burned to provide electricity to power the machinery and all vehicles used in the plant. Excess electricity is sold to the city. The water is processed into clean water used in the plant and sold to the city. The waste heat from the electrical generating plant is used to dry and sterilize the solid waste. This is pulverized, bagged, and sold as organic fertilizer. They are paid for taking the raw material. And paid again for all that they produce. Nothing is wasted. Look at co-generation. Large hotels need electricity and hot water. Co-generation burns fuel to produce the electricity they need. Excess electricity is sold to the city. The waste heat is used to heat the water they need. The vacuum drying was a surprise! When I took woodworking, air drying took 8 years and kiln driving took 6 years. It is so different today. Vacuum, pressure, and heat reduce years to days. Please show more on microwave vs heated-plate vacuum drying. Finally comes editing the videos. Your technique has greatly improved over the years. You stopped using sped-up video for the sawing and save it for when it is most effective, like ripping boards for flooring. You have also gotten much better with the drone footage. Your work is truly excellent! Keep it up. I would like to see a new "A Day In The Woods" video. More sawing! Plant more trees and more varieties of trees on your new property.

Matt, Very Happy for you! I know you are starting to feel more like normal work rather than in transition and building to complete the transition! Good to see Eloise in there helping you out and driving her little vehicle around. I think she will leave it wherever she is at the moment also….haha. Lindsay, If you draw some driving curved roads on the floor, the kids will have a race track.

Infloor heating is a mass which releases heat slowly and evenly. You are spot on in your observations on leasing business space. Your rent is tax deductible and is a method to match revenues with expenses, as opposed to incurring cost of buying or building a facility.

Leasing is also an option. Where I worked, the machines were leased, massive machines making plastic interior Jeep parts, millions to buy. I worked w/ engineers and did mostly production most of my life. Staying in business means leasing CNC's or outsourcing as you do. My father was also an engineer, a farmer and I got a free education in both fields.

Very cool how you incorporated the actual cutting/milling of past pieces and storing/moving them today. Kind of where a sawyers mind goes I guess. A, I remember that moment.

Very good thought process on the chairs, I have been a pro woodworker for the past 40 years and built several commissioned tables . I never had a source for chairs and they were usually provided by an interior decorator. You nailed it on the limitation of most shops being able to produce a chair for 1 job, way to technical for most and ultimately just not profitable. I wish you the best in your chair business ,and I wonder if most of your sales are business to business. Cheers

Matthew, please make sure you anchor those tall racks to either the floor, wall or trusses. It is !extremely! easy to knock one of those tall ones over with the forklift accidentally.

Yep, when building our home I found that 55 degrees was about perfect - I was warm enough while working but got cold if I quit so it kept me moving. My current workshop is kept in low 60's which is fine for the same reason. Plus I have an insulated floor over the concrete which helps a lot.

Thanks for the real life light comparison, that really helped.

It's great to see it all coming together. Fantastic work. Happy New Year - all the best for you and yours. (From Sunny NW Florida).

I'm always impressed at the amount of thinking that goes into your answers. Great space to work in.

Matt, i'm so happy for you to be at this stage. Must be such a nice feeling to now be able to focus all your attention on doing what Linds wants you to do...which is FINISH THE HOUSE !!!!! 😂😂

Beautiful and Efficient Operation is coming so fast! I know it will help you so much be more profitable and cause you to endure less stress!

Great thing to have that work shop thank you for sharing with us.

Love your videos. Thanks for the overview. Not my project but I feel better after watching your organization fully taking shape .. nothing quite like being organized!

In my time as an electrician ( 40 yrs) I have installed general lighting and task lighting i.e. desk, workbench, machines. etc and it always seemed to work well. ☘

Thanks Matt great insight into your products and business.

Well done Matt, thanks for sharing. I am looking forward to the flooring and cabinetry work on the remodeled home.

Congratulations on your awesome building!! I see you have excellent skills in coordinating things to your advantage. It’ll definitely be a time saver when you’re looking for something!! Good job!!!

Thanks for taking the time to walk through the chair kits and workbench product line.

Matt your shop is starting to lok great take your time and it will be fantastic when its done.

Wow, you sure got THAT ready in short order! Looking forward to seeing what you do next with your house.

I get some kind of joy and peace when you post somtehing from the barn. Please don't stop can't wait to see when you will start working beautiful wood stuff. Best regards, from Romania!

I am happy for you... a place for everything and everything in it's place.

I have complacently (and appreciatively) watched you sort out the enormous jumble of apparent junk that spoiled the neat geometry of the brand new building, all the while ruminating on the urgent need to tidy out my knitting bag. You've done a great job; I still need to get on it. The psychology of organization is endlessly fascinating, and you have quite a knack for it. The best of New Years to you and yours.

To me it is amazing how fast this project has come to fruition. Excellent job on the organization or at least the first iteration. I can see some of those lights n my future.

Great job, Matt! You are a great organizer - you are the Marie Kondo of tidying up warehouses! 😊

Thanks for explaining your view of rent vs ownership. This space is really cool. Congratulations once again.

Its really coming to together. In addition to the lifting capacity of your equipment, I notice the Matt Cremona lifting capacity is pretty damn good as well. Thanks for sharing!

I just put up those same lights in my shop, love them!

Great job putting together the pallet racks by yourself. Not easily done.

The MattCave is looking good! Certainly a lot of work, thanks for sharing this journey.

In regards to the heat question,I will agree with you on it.I have floor heat in my shop.If im working,for the most part you can get by with it at 55.Ive slowly adjusted mine up over the years(been only 4) to this year i have it set at 60.Mainly because i have people over,or customers and we hang around and have a beer,etc.Ive found that we started to get chilled with anything under 60.AT 60 when working,you can be down to just a vest or less for sure.Where floor heat really shines in my opinion is the colder it gets outside.Its been 5 degrees out for the last couple days...Its amazing how warm it feels in my shop,better than my house i think!lol..its also makes no noise and every corner of a space is warm

The white ceiling and walls help reflect the lights in your shop along with the lights being closer to each other. The Barn is looking awesome!

Looking good , Matt! Glad to see it’s coming together.

I like it when a plan comes together, Matthew, and this is moving along well. Yeah, wondered about the storage of the forklift. In the factories where I worked, during summers months between semesters, most plants just left them wherever out of the way, and if you needed one you just looked for it.

Thanks for sharing that, good work!

Awesome information for people that want to learn what to do how you do it and implement it in their business

One suggestion, put a door opener/closer on our garage door with a remote control. maybe help with the heat going in and out on your heavy equipment.

Thanks for all the info on the business and the cost/logistics of building the barn! I'm in a more urban area and I'm working on getting a garage built, it's been valuable to see another person go through this process and learn about the way

Love it! Even if it isn't as well-litas you eventually want, think what it would be with fluorescent tubes. I am amazed at the difference LEDs make in my garage. Once again I am insanely jealous and covet that barn. It is certainly a dream space for anyone who wants to do anything they desire. Thanks for taking us along, Matt!

I am also a bit obsessed with good high quality lighting. Great job on the big barn!

I would like to know your strategy for staying organized. What is your system for inventory, planning and such? Not only in the woodworking side but also in the video making. Watching the flashbacks to when you first milled the trees made me think about this. Knowing the thousands of hours you must have of content how do you keep up with it all?

Awesome Work Space Matt!!! 👍

Thanks for the tour. I like high you thought outside the box to create your chair business.

Super amazing work Matt, much respect man😊👍

Excellent progress Matt 👍😎

Fascinating video. Thanks!

I have the same type of lighting in my garage. I look down at the floor when I flip the switch to prevent temporary blindness! The lighting makes the space a great place to work!

Its a great feeling when a good plan comes together. Have you noticed that big open space inside the building has begun to shrink as you add more and more stuff. Have a great day.

It is also a good idea to wait on covering the walls to see if you get any separation of the insulation from the posts.

Super job, all coming together nicely. It takes time to get there but you are getting it done in record time. Amazing effort and focus. Well done.

I did in-floor radiant heat in my new shop, I Love it. You are right, it is a different type of heat but very effective, initial cost may be high but the cost to operate is low.

Thanks for the tour looks good

Hey Matt , That was quite the feat to put that racking up yourself, Great Job ! Glad your getting it all done Your way , Good Feel'n inside. Take Care of you And Family .

I’ve really enjoyed watching your videos for several years and watching how you’ve grown in your business. This video has brought a couple of questions to mind: 1. Do you still cut all of the chair kits yourself or have you gotten to a point where you are now outsourcing the cutting and prep work? 2. I love the heated floor setup. Have you considered putting an automatic garage door opener on that huge door so you can close quickly after going in or out to save heat and money? Thanks for the videos, Keith

Matt, you introduced me to Arm r Seal 7 years ago and changed my life. Alongside Marc S. You guys are the 2 main driving forces im why I ever got started in Woodworking. Thank you for never lowering the bar and just continuing to show us the bar has no limit. Keep up the great work and never stop inspiring us! Absolutely incredible stuff.

You’re making great progress ‼️🙋‍♀️🇨🇱

Nice looking setup, Great video for a look into your life. I have watched you for quite some time and really enjoy following your adventures. Thanks for sharing.

You should consider extra lighting in areas where you do your work like the packing area. When I worked for a dealership they had extra lights run along the walls at 5ft just above the work benches at a 45* angle down towards the benchtops for detailed work and standard lights on the ceiling so people wouldn't fall over their own feet. Remember the lights aren't dim their just too far away from the work area when mounted to the ceiling.

You are the all time, Solo Pallet Racker!