VizslaDad's Shop Tour

[VizslaDad]

Hi folks - my woodworking time is nearly non-existent these days since the birth of our identical twin boys in June. They are doing great, and no, we're not getting any sleep yet. I thought I'd scratch the itch a little by writing up a shop tour post. 

If you've been on the forum a while you may have seen some of the work I've put in to get where I am with my current shop today:

 

I went from this:

 My detached garage, prior to stuffing it full of all the stuff that didn't get unpacked in the house, along with all of my stationary tools. 

Through this:

  It was no fun working around all of this, but I got it done!

To this:

 Insulated, lit, and equipped!

The story of my current shop begins three years ago when I said goodbye to my former workspace, and bachelorhood. I used to live in Seattle in a funky artist loft space. The loft was essentially a concrete box on the seventh floor of an old brewery located in a grungy, industrial part of the city. I only leased the space, but could modify it however I wished assuming whatever work I did was of sufficient quality and/or could be removed without destroying the building. I opted for the former and built a 300 square foot structure inside the roughly 35' x 45' space. The lower level was divided into woodshop and storage, while the second level a lounge and bedroom (complete with hardwood floors). The place was essentially a grown man's treehouse, complete with an elevator and ample lumber storage in my "living room." Of course it was more than a little silly to do all of that in a place I didn't own, but building out the space brought me a lot of happiness and mostly kept me out of trouble. Unfortunately, I made my actual woodshop area much too small in hindsight. That and many other lessons learned informed my planning for my new shop.

Some shots of my old place just for fun:

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Suffice as to say my now-wife was not keen on living in a disgusting part of town nor in an old brewery's cold storage facility/my treehouse. I moved into her apartment and my tools went into storage. Eventually we decided to move to Cleveland, OH, where my wife had gone to grad school and has a lot of friends. Her family is also primarily distributed through the midwest (and I have very little family on my side) and dollars go much further here than they did in Seattle. We moved on the condition that I could put a worthwhile shop space together at the new place.

Fast forward a couple years, and I finally have a functional shop once again. We initially thought it'd be reasonable to build a new detached garage and shop, but expense and local architectural review board issues thwarted me. Thus, I made what I think are cost effective improvements to the existing detached garage so I could finally get back to making furniture:
- spray-foamed the interior to air seal a bit (the stud bays had been open and one could feel the breeze blow through the walls)
- insulated with batts 
- hung sheathing plywood on walls and ceiling
- installed a subpanel and wired several circuits in EMT on the walls
- slapped together a "mower garage" within which my mower resides and all the yard tools can be hung

I started the buildout in earnest this time last year, and last week I finally milled up a piece of lumber to s6s confirming my machines are set up adequately for my purposes. 

 Night trenching was "fun"

 NE Ohio clay ramped up the effort required. Logistics did not allow for me to rent a trencher. 

 Luckily the spray foam contractor put plastic on all my stuff. 

 

Cheap contractor-grade rolls were the name of the game for my walls. The time and effort to insulate and sheath the walls was compounded by the fact that I could not empty the space, so I had to climb over/contort myself around piles of tools and boxes etc. Unpleasant. 

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Obviously I am not an electrician. A pro installed and electrified my panel. I took it from there. No fires so far!

 

View from the roll up door. My tablesaw, drill press, planer, and miter saw, and wire storage rack are all on casters to accommodate mixed use of the space. Unfortunately I do have to store some bulky items (like a salvaged Wolf range and all of my yard tools). The dead space created by those items coupled with a full width roll up door that needs to remain functional really limits the usable wall space. 

 My wife got me a Calavera apron for my birthday last year. It's very nice.

 

A look from my Sawstop contractor saw towards my bench area. I need to relocate the bicycles to the basement. 

 

My 6" Grizzly jointer and Dewalt planer sit under my lumber rack. I love my Laguna 1412 bandsaw.

 My bench area (I have since cleaned my bench off)

 

Quick and dirty shop cabinet made from scrap. The drawers are interchangeable, with the thought I might make more cabinets with a similar design and as such reorganizing could be made simpler. The green locker was in the garage when we bought the house, and in rough shape due to rodent infestation. Half a bottle of naval jelly, a pressure washer, and a bunch of spraypaint later it makes a fine home for my PPE and adhesives. 

I bought a Ramia workbench from Highland Woodworking for my last shop out of a desire to focus on making furniture in my limited spare time vs a bench. It is a functional bench, but suboptimal. The base is rickety (held together with a couple bolts and a handful of glued dowels, some of which have since failed). Eventually I would like to put the top on a new base and relocate the bench to my basement for carving/handtool work in spare moments when the twins are asleep. I would like to build the Anarchist's Workbench a la Chris Schwarz when time allows. 

This workbench weighs a ton. Like my PPE/glue locker it was in the garage when we moved here. It took a few hours of scrubbing and scraping with various substances to rid the drawers of rodent urine rust. My little Rockler lathe will eventually be mounted to this bench once I de-rust it.

My wife and MIL went to a moving sale one day and came across 12 milk crates of tools and fasteners. Each crate was $2.50, so they bought them all. It turns out the seller was a former high end finish contractor. The crates were full of goodies like SOSS hinges and really high quality fasteners. Super deal! The Akro bins are handy, but I currently have too many stuff onto that rack to be too useable. I want to build a cabinet around the rack with additional hanging space on the back so that common items can be accessed most easily, while extras and oddball/less-frequently-used items (I don't use 9" concrete anchors every day) could be tucked away on the back. 

 s6s

 

I just wanted to share what I've assembled. Thanks to the many folks here who made helpful suggestions and answered my questions.

[drzaius]

Shop's coming along nicely. I gotta say though, that's an odd way to pipe those outlets at the panel.

[VizslaDad]

14 minutes ago, drzaius said:

Shop's coming along nicely. I gotta say though, that's an odd way to pipe those outlets at the panel.

I hear you on my conduit routing. Those bends were relatively easy for me to make. I learned quite a lot putting that all together. 

[pkinneb]

Nice shop! Having said that I'm still wrapping my head around a loft in Seattle to married and twins in OH, some major life changes for you right there LOL

[treeslayer]

well done sir! and now to find the time to make stuff, it can be done, we had 4 kids and when shop time came it was just that much better

[Coop]

Quiet a move. Political and logistical.  That aside, that is a great looking shop. 

[drzaius]

6 hours ago, VizslaDad said:

I hear you on my conduit routing. Those bends were relatively easy for me to make. I learned quite a lot putting that all together. 

That sound you hear is my pulling my foot out of my mouth  I misread & thought the electrician did it. As a conduit noob, you did a great job there.

[VizslaDad]

13 hours ago, Coop said:

Quiet a move. Political and logistical.  That aside, that is a great looking shop. 

Thank you! It is nice to know where most everything is and know it's all largely useable when spare moments come available. 

I have a strong distrust of people and entities in power (regardless of elephant or donkey affiliation) so the political differences don't trouble me. Both my staunchly left and right-leaning friends and family have lots to say though haha.

The move itself was a logistical mess. Our stuff was split between home and a storage unit an hour from our house, and at the time we both traveled a fair amount for work. I had to move all of my tools, lumber (dumbbbb...should have sold it but I was in a very rural area where I doubted I'd get any kind of value for the dollar on Khaya which I have in modest volume), and other heavy things to stage at the house alone using a penske truck with a lift gate. The trailer for our stuff was dropped off at the house and I had to load as much as I could before leaving on a business trip, leaving my wife to finish packing and see off the trailer (which did not go well and ended up costing us a significant amount of money because she didn't go vertical and we were paying per cubic foot).

The trailer got picked up and she loaded her car with the dog and drove from WA to OH. I got back from my business trip and lived on an air mattress in the mostly empty house for a couple weeks, then crammed the rest of our stuff she didn't put in the trailer into/onto my tacoma and I made the drive out to OH around Thanksgiving. NEVER AGAIN

18 hours ago, pkinneb said:

Nice shop! Having said that I'm still wrapping my head around a loft in Seattle to married and twins in OH, some major life changes for you right there LOL

It has been quite a transition! The only significant regret I have is acquiescing to living in a suburban area. I really just want to be out in the woods. 

17 hours ago, treeslayer said:

well done sir! and now to find the time to make stuff, it can be done, we had 4 kids and when shop time came it was just that much better

That's what I am looking forward to. We have a rental house that needs work all the time, and a bathroom needs remodeling at home, so there will be some opportunities to make simple built ins and whatnot. Theoretically my wife is excited for me to make some toys and a toybox for the boys but we shall see what her true mood is when I try to take on the work. 

12 hours ago, drzaius said:

That sound you hear is my pulling my foot out of my mouth  I misread & thought the electrician did it. As a conduit noob, you did a great job there.

I took zero offense! I too would have been horrified if my electrician had done the conduit work like that, haha. You should have seen my trash can full of bending mistakes. I probably incorrectly bent 20% of the pipe I bought, but I did get much better day by day. It's really satisfying to get the bends correct. If I had to do it over again I don't think I would have done the whole job in EMT. The majority of the receptacles are never going to move, and I could have achieved a much cleaner installation if I had gone the romex/flush mounted receptacles route. It'd have been simple to make up some metal junction boxes on the wall surface for future expansion. 

I really just couldn't afford to have it done properly, and I was under the pregnancy time crunch so I just did the work as quickly as I could figure it out. It was my first serious electrical project. I went overboard researching and preparing for the work so I could make progress every day. It all paid off though. There might be one or two boxes that could be cleaned up but otherwise I was very disciplined about box and conduit fill and balancing loads across my panel etc. I stared at this for a couple weeks:

[legenddc]

It's totally possible to get stuff done with kids. I wouldn't commit to anything timewise though. Especially so young they change schedules the second you get used to it.

Get a whiteboard and figure out a process for working in 20-30 minute chunks. Write it all down so you remember what to do when you go back in. Sometimes I'll sneak downstairs and set up a tool in 5-10 minutes so I can come back after they go to sleep and get into things quicker. Don't count on many free 8 hour days to get things done.

[VizslaDad]

On 9/23/2020 at 3:30 PM, legenddc said:

It's totally possible to get stuff done with kids. I wouldn't commit to anything timewise though. Especially so young they change schedules the second you get used to it.

Get a whiteboard and figure out a process for working in 20-30 minute chunks. Write it all down so you remember what to do when you go back in. Sometimes I'll sneak downstairs and set up a tool in 5-10 minutes so I can come back after they go to sleep and get into things quicker. Don't count on many free 8 hour days to get things done.

Sage advice. Thank you. Luckily I work from home from my computer, so I can sneak project planning between meetings (or during them if I don't have to participate too much).

[legenddc]

That's been a nice side effect of the pandemic. I was able to get 6 coats of finish done over the last 2 days since I'm working from home. If not it would have taken me 3-5 days to get it done.

I forgot to say in my first post, congrats on the kids! Hope you're all adjusting well and everyone is staying healthy!

[VizslaDad]

10 hours ago, legenddc said:

That's been a nice side effect of the pandemic. I was able to get 6 coats of finish done over the last 2 days since I'm working from home. If not it would have taken me 3-5 days to get it done.

I forgot to say in my first post, congrats on the kids! Hope you're all adjusting well and everyone is staying healthy!

Thank you. They're perfectly healthy, which is a relief considering they arrived a day shy of 34 weeks (so premature, but not extremely premature). The boys had to stay in the NICU for a few weeks before we could bring them home. I am fortunate in that I had 90 days of paid paternity leave...I don't know what we'd have done without it. My wife was on a contract job that ended shortly before the boys were born, which was good, but we went without that income until she went "back" (from home) a couple weeks ago. I also just started back up (also from home) so it's a little crazy but I couldn't be happier.

[Naomi]

Congratulations on the twins! Nice shop, too! CLE is a great city with lovely people!! Enjoy!

[Sheri]

Great store, I like

[Coop]

Congrats on the twins. They will be teens before you know it. Savor each and every moment.