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After a long serie of late nights and sweltering California summer weekends, my garage/workshop
makeover is finally completed. It is definitely not anyone's "dream" workshop by any stretch
(in fact, as far as a woodworking shop goes, mine is probably the most bare-boned one around. There
is only one table saw and a cheapo bench top drill press that are big enough to be visible; no planer,
jointer, bandsaw, etc.) But it is now in a decent enough shape I won't be ashamed to show it off.
This makeover solves a lot of problems I've had in the past -- mainly storage space, dust, and
to a large extent for me, the overall look. And here is the story behind it:
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| Way Back When |
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These are the pictures we took about two years ago before we bought the house. It was a typical garage
with lots of boxes and open shelves everywhere. The walls were bare studs with construction paper and
shingles on the outside.
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| Workshop 1.0 |
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After we moved in, I bought my BT3100 table saw and got started on the woodworking hobby.
I cleaned up the garage somewhat, added a few boards and a ton of nails and screws to hang
my tools and a few home made jigs.
Unfortunately, I didn't take any picture of the original workshop. But from the pictures on the left,
which I took during the construction of my console table (posted on WoodNet earlier), you can get
a glimpse of what it looked like in the background (and yes, the folding table was actually my
workbench!). The collection of boxes and various storage items on the floor, on the open shelves
and on the wall made the shop look unsightly. With the inefficient use of space, I was quickly
running out of storage. And I got very tired of cleaning off the dust that fell on top of all items
on the open shelves every time I worked on my woodworking projects.
Something must be done!
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| The Makeover |
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We started by tearing down all the shelves and pulling out all the nails and screws from the wall. Then
we added the 5/8" drywalls on both sides (the wall attached to the main house already has fire-resist
drywall installed.). The wall installing, taping, sanding, and painting process was a family-fun affair
that everybody, from 11- to 45-year old, got to do everything they wanted. (It was just a garage and a
workshop anyway. Nothing needs to be super neat. But the result turned out to be quite good considering
it's the our first ever drywalling.)
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After the walls were done, I started to work on the rest of the remodeling. Too bad I forgot to
take the pictures of these during constructions.
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| Workshop 2.0 |
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And here it is, the completed project. This is the view on the workbench side of the garage.
I made the bench from a discarded solid-core garage door that my sister managed to destroy while
she parked her car a few weeks earlier. The bench is attached to the wall and it is foldable to
save space when not in use.
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I converted all open shelves where I used to store my woodworking supplies into a wall-mounted
and floor cabinets. The enclosed cabinets minimize the dust. These are made from all melamine boards
except the drawer boxes which were made with 1/2" ply. The cabinet has the same height as the
workbench and it is also the same height as my table saw and its outfeed table.
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| Another view of the workbench side. |
The workbench folded down and the table saw "parked" |
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When it comes to wall system for hanging hand tools, I prefer the cleaner, eye-pleasing look
of the slatwalls to the typical pegboards. But slatwalls are too expensive for me, especially
considering the high cost for shipping a small order. So I decided to build them myself out of a
1"x6" pine board. I ripped them in half at 45° and install them beveled-side up. Then I made a
bunch of fixtures similar to the French-cleat system to hang the tools.
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But for hand planes, I think it's easier and more secure to hang them on the hooks made out of coat
hangers instead. To protect the blades, I stick the felt pads up where the plane soles will rest.
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Here is the view of the built-in cabinet/closet/work desk side of the garage. Instead of making a real
full-height cabinet, I opted for a serie of wall-attached shelves with the shelf brackets reused from
Workshop 1.0. Then I built the "shell" to cover it. I figured it would have the same effect without all
the hardwork of doing the real cabinet anyway.
I cut the shelves from 8'-4' melamine sheets. The width is 16" so I can made 3 shelves out of each sheet.
The edges are iron-on bandings. The "shell" was made out of 2"x4" framing timber and covered with 1/4"-
thick malamine-veneered MDF. The doors of the cabinet and the closet were reused from the old bi-folds
we had in our old condo before we bought the house. But I instead converted the bigger ones into sliding
doors so that when I park my truck, it won't get in a way when opened.
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Since the width of the closet is wider than the sliding doors, I had to create the frame for the door
opening smaller. I took advantage of the remaining width by making built-in mini-shelves from scrap
melamines and a built-in paper towel dispenser. The size of the shelves fit the spray can stuffs pretty
well. To prevent the cans from falling, I drilled the side frames and put the 1/4" dowel rods in the front.
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I filled the space between the tall cabinet and the cleaning supplies closet with a full-length work desk.
Not that I'd do any paper work in my garage. But I found it's handy for sitting down and doing some sketch
works from time to time. The relative large melamine surface is also good for glue-up and finishing jobs
as well.
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Here is a closer look of the cleaning supply & storage closet. It is designed to stored odd-size items
that don't fit well on the shelf (including my old "workbench" that I still use from time to time). The
built-in mini-shelves are the same idea as in the cabinet except these are deeper.
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I built a "parking garage" for the trash and recycle bins so that I can make a much better use of the
space above them. It also gives a built-in look to their storage as well.
On the left is the cage for storing the tall pieces of wood scraps, steel rods, etc.
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Behind the bins, I used the space to store scrap pieces of sheet goods as well as some cardboards I use
for laying on the floor to protect my work. I got the tip from some magazines to hang a weight on a rope
in the front. This is to prevent these sheet scraps from collapsing when I pull the trash bins out.
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The added benefit of the recycled and trash bins "garage" is the additional wall surface for storing
items. Instead of covering both sides of the wall frame, I only covered one side and left the other
side open and use the exposed studs as built-in racks for (my very humbly collection of) clamps.
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I also built the collapsible outfeed table for my table saw. The top is made from melamine board to
take advantage of the slick surface. The frames were made out of the old bed frames I was about to
throw away at the begining of the remodeling. The table is pretty lightweight and very compact
when folded.
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For sure there's a lot of hard labor and a lot of trial and errors in the process of completing this
project. But end the result was very rewarding for me. It definitely makes my shop time a lot more
enjoyable!
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