Creation of a Garage Shop


Rowdymon

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Well I'm new roun' these parts...

and getting ready to start on putting together my shop. Before, during and after pictures will come along shortly.

The plan -

Alas, my Chevelle has to share the garage with my shop, along with the washer, dryer, massive deep freeze and a cabinet of kitchen junk. The rest...as they say...is mine.

In addition I really don't like this house...it's 65 miles from work and just not laid out like I want. Once the little lady gets out of school and finds gainful employment...we are off house hunting. Till then...I'm loathe to build many perm. pieces for what will ultimately become a rental.

Thankfully the Chevelle moves quite nicely under her own power and due to the lack of ice and snow, can spend some nights outside if need be.(Actually she's lived that way for a couple of years now...but need to get her under cover as it were).

That means...the majority of things needs to be mobile. With that thought in mind, I have hit a mother load in the shape of a local school district auction where I purchased more cabinets than I will need, all of them on four heavy duty casters. My selection of wood working tools is limited, so once I get what I have organized I will start the process of putting together something I can turn perfectly good lumber into a mixture of sawdust and scrap wood.

Currently the plan is to have my old workbench (old school library card catelogs stacked four high with two 30 year old (and heavy) 2x12x10 chunks of what I believe is SYP next to the deep freeze on the right hand side. The left hand side will be cleared out and cabinets will be placed on the left after I attach push/pull handles. Bench tools will be placed within on plywood bases that I can bolt down to said workbench using 3/8 threaded inserts (idea I picked up on one of the magazine web pages).

Table saw will likely be a cabinet saw on a mobile base.

Dust collection will be via my trusty shop vac and a Rockler vortex thingamabobber attached.

Work starts this weekend when Jim_WoodWarden comes over to help me build a gate large enough to fit a golf cart through...and pictures will be up sometime after...

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Ok, part one accomplished this weekend.

We got the gate modified so the cart could pass through it...I had to trash the garage to get us there...so I'm a bit ashamed of the state my garage is currently in. However, I'm trying to be as honest as I can with what it's taking...I documented what it looked like this AM after we finished things up.

Mainly, I want to document what it takes for someone to create a space that will allow for both a car and woodworking to be done when taking what most folks here in the south do...moving from a garage that is mainly storage to actually useable.

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Well, it's not quite as bad as it looks...we have been remodeling bits and areas of the house so some things have just been placed in the garage as temporary holding...

Our kitchen cabinetry is not adequate to the task of holding all the geegaws and gadgets my wife has accumulated over the years, and that's in several of the boxes to be sorted out into one of the 7' cabinets I just purchased. Also, a big screen TV I recently replaced and will be either sold or given away. There are some old cabinets that get hung over the washer/dryer area for storage and much of the rest is going into the attic.

My guess is I have 5 hours or so of work out there to prepare for the pickup of the rolling cabs and then have a yard sale with the cabinets I don't use and other various junk (hers) and treasures (mine) left over after we decide what we are going to keep and what's going out the doors...

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I'ld love to, but that TV is honestly just too massive and space is at a premium. I'm loosing the entire backwall and 8' of another wall to the washer/dryer, kitchen junk and the deep freeze. I will have some room on the wall above the deep freeze, but that will likely end up being lumber storage...

I do have plans to put a PC with a 19-21" monitor in that grey cabinet in the back of the 3rd and 4th pictures. It's got room at the top for a stereo cabinet and holes already drilled to place speakers on either side...so I"ll be able to watch using that...but mainly listening to music and pulling up sketchup drawings.

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Ok....it's been a busy four day weekend at the Rowdymon House...

So I won several of these cabinets in an auction...actually I won 3x as many as I need...so next weekend is a yard sale including what I'm not using in my own shop

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Now they have different configurations...but the basic gist is...I have a bunch of rolling storage cabinets...

*grin*

I've started cleaning up in the garage...and got my workbench cleaned off...it's amazing how quickly things start happening when motivated.

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I love the new cabinets...they roll around so nice. I should have taken some pictures of the one I set aside for the lathe cabinet...but right now my garage is literally stacked front to back with rolling cabinets. The funny part is they were selling about 100 of them in this auction. Some went for more than $100 apiece. I won mine on average of $30 per unit, and after renting a 26' box truck and the gas for two trips...my break even cost is $45 per unit. I figure I got a great deal on them. Best part is...when I'm ready to move to a new shop...I can tape the doors shut and roll them into a truck to their new home. No fuss, no muss.

On the card catalogues...my grandfather picked them up many moons ago, then they were in use in my father's shop and have been mine for the last couple of years. Interestingly enough, anytime we have a garage/yard sale I get people who want to buy them. *laugh* It's not that they aren't for sale...few things I own aren't. Problem is...they aren't willing to pay what they are worth to ME.

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