A Canton man wears out five drills assembling his investment alternative: a self-storage business.
By Donna M. Perry
Staff Writer
CANTON
It took a lot of patience, hundreds of screws, stacks of metal, some know-how and help from friends.

After enduring several setbacks and wearing out five drills, Chris Dailey has a new business venture: Dailey’s A2Z Self-Storage off Route 108 in Canton.

He can laugh about the hardships now.

Dailey said he had been trying to figure out a way to make money since the stock market went gone down and he needed to supplement his income.

Then it hit him.

He was driving to the coast one day and saw seven or eight self-storage buildings.

“I thought that it didn’t sound like too bad of a business,” he said.

When he did some research, he said he discovered that the units are usually 90 percent full.

“I think there’s a demand for it,” Dailey said. “I thought it was a viable option. It’s a good way to make money.”

As far as value for dollar, he said, it seemed like the place to go.

It’s good for people who are moving or those who have no place for storage, including boats and cars.

Coming up missing

He figured what he would charge per month for a 10-by-10-foot space and his two 10-by-20-foot units, then he took out a home equity loan and prepped the far end of his property.

He ordered a building kit and doors, applied for a town permit and had a lawyer draw up a contract to cover his bases.

Then the fun began.

The building arrived in pieces on a flatbed truck three weeks late.

It took about five hours to conduct inventory of a pile of metal that was about the same size of a building, said. Three pieces were missing.

“My biggest problem was the plans,” he said.

One side was flipped on the blueprints, and the center beams were misplaced, he said.

If he’d put it together that way, he said, the sides would have been 6 inches off.

“Fortunately, I am a former ironworker,” he said. “It was the only thing that saved me from going completely insane.”

He burned out at least five drills, trying to put in the “bags and bags” of screws. He opted to pre-drill the self-tapping screws to speed the project along.

Murphy’s law

It took about two weeks to put the framework up in his free time and an additional 60 hours to put the sheathing and doors on, he said.

He had a lot of people helping him, he said, both contractors and friends.

But it wasn’t easy.

He had a setback when someone stole two beams for the project and took the letters from his signboard. That put the project on hold until replacement beams could arrive.

Getting electricity to the building was another adventure, he said.

He had to put in a private power line, which he said cost him almost as much as the building. And it took a bank three times to get the checks printed right.

“Anything that could go wrong did go wrong,” Dailey said, as he laughed.

“It took a little longer than I expected, but it’s done.”

dperry@sunjournal.com

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