12 Comments

Well organized Brian.
By the time it’s all done it will be very functional.

It’s amazing how much you fit in a small space.

Brian, I like your shop. I already gutted your shop and redesigned it. Lol its not on paper but in my mind. You know how you said you like the cabinets I have. Well the back wall where your lumber is stacked up well you could start here. What you could do is hang all upper cabinets on a french cleat across the wall but keep the top of cabinets 12" down from the ceiling. Then you could lay a 1/2 plywood across the top. Now you have cabinet space for tools and a shelf all the way across for tools in a case. Like I have that corner shelf in my first picture. Then on the other wall with all your plywood. (I’ll get back to underneath the cabinets in a bit)
What id do (this is only suggestions) is put my lumber rack on this wall all the way up to the ceiling. Right where the garage door tracks are. Figure out what is the longest lenght wood you would use in a project. Then add a foot. So if your building cabinets and the longest piece is 5 ft then make your rack 6 foot long Or 7 foot. That way you could by 12’ or 14’ and cut them in half and stack. Your lumber should be close to the door. Pull up and unload with less walking. Looks like by the picture you have 16 to 18 inches from wall to the door opening so then next to the lumber rack put your plywood.
what I do here is build a large swing cacabinet to accept your sheetgoods but above it do a sheet good cutoff cabinet (open face).or do the alternative rack. See pictures

Now back to the wall with all the cabinets heres a bench system you could modify to swing up you tools

Other ideas

Hey you know we could always talk on the phone if you want any help just let me know. Like I said these are suggestions.

Ah, Jeff, the thing is a lot of those ideas require the luxurious ceiling height of 8’ or better. LOL I’m 6’4" and I have to duck under the garage door. I barely fit under those florescent lamps. Haha.

But the idea for cabinets over the lumber storage is great. I never considered it. The shelf was always there and I never did anything about it. All that junk there could fit in less than half the space if it were in some organized fashion in cabinets. That’s a winner and I’ll hit that up this summer.

Also the plywood cart is looking better and better. Not because it saves space – the cart itself takes space – but because it’s such a pain to get anything from that pile. It’s literally upright and tied to the wall with this hook I made from an old dog collar. Every time I need to get something from that stack I play this game where I’m about to get crushed by 800 lbs of plywood as it springs of the wall. It’s not much fun and I dread it every time. The cart with hinges on the wall is exactly the one I’ve been thinking about.

Funny thing about the tablesaw location. One reason it ended up where it is, is because the safety/manual handle on the garage door hangs down directly over the saw when the door is open. It sticks down about a foot or more. I hit my head on that thing about a dozen times. With the saw directly under it, I can’t bang my head into it anymore. LOL there are some crazy but very practical reasons for choosing layout!

Great shop Brian, I like what you have done with the place. Ingenious ideas!

Yeah I know where your coming from. I just threw out more ideas. I suggest you check out pinterest. They actually have one car garage ideas.
The thing Brian I was considering your ceiling height. Thats why I stated your lumber rack to go to the ceiling by the garage door but not to exceed the depth of wall to door opening. The cabinets on that back wall by keeping it down 12 " you for sure can access all the cabinets but you gain that 12" space as a shelf plus you could still make a full lenght bench underneath the upper cabinets and if you made it like the one in that picture I posted youcould make it a flip out also. Just make some lader legs to put under the flip out. You could store the ladder legs on top of the upper cabinets. Well I like your shop and what ever you do will make it mor awesome.

That bench was really cool. If I were starting from scratch I would give it serious consideration. As it is, this stuff is a lot of work to begin with and my time is both limited and competing with other projects that need to get done. I’m hoping that the new layout, when complete, will make things more efficient and more enjoyable. After that I will tackle my kitchen. :-)

You know, another thing I considered was a tablesaw workstation and/or outfeed table/workstation like yours. But after thinking about it for a long time I decided not to do either. I wouldn’t gain much storage from the tablesaw workstation because I keep my shop vac under the table and I really have no where else to put it. And the outfeed thing just takes up too much space. I will probably make a folding outfeed table, though. It would be nice to have a little extra support there but I can’t have it take up another 30 sf of floor area.

Brian,

You have done a wonderful job of making a very usable shop in a small space. I agree with you that if we were to start from scratch again, we might do things differently. Our shops just keep evolving!

L/W

Very innovative ideas with the use of space Brian. I have spotted a few I am going to “borrow”. Great shop! Thanks.

Brian as i stated before you have a great shop and you have done well with setting it up. i just threw out sugestions for i know your looking for ideas. yes, to gut and restart would hinder time and money. im sorry if it sounded like you should do that.

No worries. I didn’t take it that way to begin with. Just pointing out the obvious. ;-)

But I’m certainly taking you up on a few of those ideas. In fact, in already working on getting some kitchen cabinets we’re going to demo set aside.