A Big Work Area

One of the more inconvenient things in my life of renting apartments was the lack of workspace. I don’t mean for this to be an excuse for my lack of creation over all of those years, as I am sure that millions of the world’s best inventions were born out of broom closets or studio apartments. But I’m not in the “have one of the world’s best ideas” line – I need workspace.
As you may recall, I recently finished my greenhouse. Today, I built an 8’ x 3’ workbench in it, with a ¾” plywood top. It’s magnificent. Hell, it’s a bed!
I have left over lumber and that one-foot wide strip of plywood, so after I pick up a bit more hardware, I’ll build a shelf up above it, too. But for now, I’ll let the deck stain cure and then I’ll add coat after coat of polyurethane until it looks just right.
Note what I, your gracious storyteller, am doing here: I’m practicing a lesson that I have learned from my time in This Damn House. Sure plywood isn’t the most attractive stuff in the world, but why should I throw a few coats of paint on it right away? Let the wood show through and collect those dings and scratches that it should have. One can always add paint later on, but a surface can never go back to the way it was before that first drop of paint fell. Well, not without an infuriating amount of mind-numbing and finger-losing work. And – Sweet Jesus…that stucco wall haunts my dreams!!! – I don’t feel like doing that ever again.Now, what do I do on that big work area?