Most of the IC2 machines can be upgraded and I've managed to get about 5 speed upgrades in each machine as well - that's a real quality of life thing for me (I've got 5 solar distillers knocking out the distilled water and a nuclear reactor powering it all so maybe that's a way off for you at the moment).
Just saying again though - be careful to remove all wiring before you mess around with the transformers - I've blown up a few times taking them out of machines when re-arranging my base
Also fried quite a few cables!
Yeah, the thermionic fab is a real drain, especially if it has some liquid glass still in there.
I did exactly the same with the drawers at first but then saw the bins - the basic one can hold 4K items! I think there are 28 circuits in total after they've been analysed, 14 'normal' and 14 'stable' so you'll need a bit of space for the bins.