 One year ago, the worst case scenario happened when nearly everything we had built and we're working on burned down and unexpected disaster. Since then, it's been an uphill struggle to get back, restore walls, lost and headed on to bigger and greater things. But first, I want to update everyone where we stand as we come up on the one year anniversary of this tragic fire. As all of you have played a very integral part in this journey. And I wanted to give one last opportunity for you to leave your mark. It has been a long and slow process to recover. And honestly, a year ago, I had basically decided I was just going to quit because the thought of rebuilding after all of this was just seemed insurmountable. I ordered to at least let people know what had happened. And maybe I could at least get enough money to rebuild what was lost. So at least wouldn't lose my own property value. Phone insurance failed me. You guys came through and you saved everything. The outpouring of support was unimaginable. I think as a creator on YouTube, it's very easy to get very focused on the negativity and what you're doing wrong and looking at just numbers of what what you're falling short on numbers that are going down. You lose sight of the people who do care and they do appreciate what you do. I say it's kind of revitalized my interest in continuing. But rebuilding has been a very slow and expensive process. Getting the proper permits delayed getting started before winter. So mostly had to just sit and wait until summer came. So in the meantime, I focused on recovering whatever I could, including rebuilding my car that was damaged in the fire, which turned out to be surprisingly straightforward, despite being fully totaled out. I also recovered a collection of the tools that I was able to dig out of the workshop with insurance, refusing coverage and a limited fund to build from on top of that skyrocketing building cost. Had to be really strategic in what we rebuilt and how we could do it. Trying to make at least some improvements, but not going over our very limited budget. But first we had to take down what was already there and get out of the way to make room for something new. Which sadly included a lot of projects. I had spent a lot of man hours and labor to construct. There's a last year I spent quite a bit of labor building this kiln here. It's hoping to meet a lot of our needs for making glass and ceramics. And we'll reach some really high temperatures. Ironically shortly after finishing it, we had a fire that was completely unrelated to this giant hot thing that's right next to it, which is frustrating because you expect the hot thing to start the fire. And not some cool thing. Those are just a little too hot. So with the fire, there's an opportunity to expand the shop. And the easiest way to do it with the existing footprints and not having to rebuild everything is to extend it back to this area. So where we are right now, those formerly outside is going to become basically the new shop that does mean that everything here needs to be cleared out and poured new cement on top of this. And this guy needs to go and originally hoping we could find some way to pick up the whole thing and move it and salvage all of the ton of work. But unfortunately, the logistics of that are not looking too feasible. It's just a lot of weight and not a good way to get underneath it. Looks like we're going to have to dismantle it and rebuild it. However, that does give an opportunity to kind of redesign it in retrospect. Oh, a little too big. It took a lot of wood to really get up to decent temperature. So we can compact it a little bit, be a lot more efficient and still reach hopefully a high enough temperature to do some glass boiling just because, you know, don't want to have a second player can move us away from any structures. It was pretty adequately insulated from the actual garage. So it didn't seem to oppose any risk there. But at this point, I'm not really looking to take many chances. So we're going to move this all kind of the middle of the yard. Yeah. So now now you have to destroy this thing I made. Not looking forward to that, but has to be done. OK, to minimize cost. The goal was to preserve whatever we could, primarily the existing walls, which are largely untouched by the fire. But the roof would need to go entirely. Then out back, we extended the workshop as much as we could and poured a new foundation for that to keep the price as minimal as possible. I did as much as work myself with my very generous dad and slowly everything started to come together. Another improvement we were able to make was an attic storage up above for extra storage space. What a nice feature we'll be able to add to the workshop as we wrap things up is an air filter, thanks to today's sponsor, Levoit. Levoit is the number one air filter brand in the United States and on Amazon. We're going to have a few different ways to manage and collect dust and provide ventilation in the shop. But getting those remaining fine particles out of the air will still be a challenge. Thankfully, they sent me the Levoit 600S, which is perfect for large spaces and work areas like the new workshop. This machine provides adequate coverage for even the new enlarged workshop, refreshing the air in a 1500 square foot area twice an hour. It's a heavy duty filter that will let us use it in the garage to help with any sawdust or smoke. It's ideal for your own indoors workshop. It will even connect with the V-Sync app, which lets you monitor air quality, set timers, manage rooms and more. It's also available in a smaller version for your individual rooms. Check it out for yourself. Check out their sales in the links below. So it's been a little bit over a year now since the actual fire and things are progressing pretty good, kind of in the home stretch of finally having it wrapped up. So let's go take a look and see where things are at. Put the dobby. This is what used to be the workshop we had before. All the same walls, we were able to salvage them. I had to put a whole new roof and then pour a new foundation because the other one is a little bit beat up to kind of prevent any fire issues in the future. We have the extra thick, fire rated drywall. The existing drywall that was already here is what preserved the walls and was why we were able to keep them. But the ceiling was just plywood and that just went up. And that's basically why the little structure was a loss because there wasn't drywall on the ceiling. So we're going to make sure we put drywall on the ceiling and give us a pretty decent protection for many future fire risk. Add-on room is going to be kind of for our primitive building. So this whole room is brand new. What we built on, there used to be the little metal lean to and the pottery kiln we built before. Had to tear all that out. We'll probably probably rebuild that somewhere else a little bit further away from the structure just so I can sleep well at night. But this is probably going to be our main work area. So it'd be kind of our main workbench for the woodworking and stuff over here. And then on this side will be the kind of a hot room and we'll have a forge and we'll get to do the blacksmithing in this area. And so on top of extra thick drywall that's fire rated going to add a layer of either brick or stone on here that will offer even more protection. But it gives the opportunity that you can purchase a part of the workshop and help with its reconstruction. And you can buy rights to a brick, put your name on it, and it'll be permanently there in the structure. Don't want to shaft everybody who donated earlier. So if you've already donated the same amount to our GoFundMe or more, you're automatically going to get a brick. If you already donated something close, you just want to donate a little bit extra to get a brick. Just talk to me. So we're pretty close to the home stretch. Money has run a little tight, unfortunately. We were able to do things pretty efficiently, cost wise, but the added just what building expenses have gone up has made it a bit tight. So hopefully we can get a little extra help from all of you to get us to the finish line and get things up and running. And hopefully in a couple of weeks, we kind of back to normal. Past year has given a very good opportunity to kind of rethink how things have been done and kind of get out of the grind of just trying to survive in the YouTube platform and trying to constantly grow and build the bigger team. And I've kind of come to the realization that I want to minimize things and just keep it simple and keep it, most importantly, enjoyable. Before it was just a grind of feeling like I had to crank up the next video, or otherwise I wouldn't be bringing enough money to make payroll. But it really created an unhealthy environment, making videos just for sake and making videos to pay the bills and just not not enjoying it as much as I should have. And it's been a real grind. I think with taking some time this year, I can feel that I do want to keep doing this, but I want to do it differently. So I'm hoping kind of a hard reset, not the ideal kind of reset I would have hoped for, but I think it gives a good opportunity to fix a lot of issues and kind of re reaffirm my focus and desires. So I'm hoping things are going to get a lot better from here.