For various reasons, I’ve been contemplating a new compressor for a while now. The current one is very small, mainly designed for small airbrushes and the like, while fine for its intended purpose, painting larger areas with a small airbrush was becoming a bit of a chore. What I really wanted was a larger paint gun, which meant a bigger compressor. Of course once a decent sized compressor was installed it would find other uses, like cleaning the cars or driving small tools around the workshop.

I’ve seen the Lidl one a few times now, but have never quite felt up to taking the plunge, it is quite big and my shed isn’t, but this weekend while having a general tidy up and moving a few things into the loft, it dawned on me that a space had opened up where I thought it would fit. Hmm, thats one less reason to not do it then!

One impromtu trip to Lidl later and I had one in the boot, along with a cleaning gun set (including a handy tyre inflator) and a nice wall mountable reel hose. The plan is to mount the reel on the inside of the shed near the door which means its easily long enough to reach outside for cleaning things, or the bench for spraying.

I need to get a moisture/oil trap at some point and wire a few more sockets in the shed but its all looking good. Long term I have a vague plan of moving it into the second shed and running a air hose through the small gap between them into the main shed, that’ll certainly move the source of noise away from where I’ll be working. But for now I can put up with the noise. Running some structured air hose around the shed presenting a quick release socket near the bench might also be a nice idea, something to ponder later :)