Workshop/Garage ideas - A practical guide to get started

[69MyWay]

Here are some thoughts I put together you might find useful when planning your next garage, or getting your current one organized: by Chris McDonald

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Okay, so you finally got a little space to work on your ride. It might be a one car garage, or a multiple bay warehouse. You might just be sharing half of the two car garage with the family grocery getter. Either way you must make the most of the space you have. Having a garage with workspace that WORKS for you is often half the battle when it comes to tackling projects.

There are a variety of ways to get the workspace sorted and organized from the extreme of having a full garage makeover by www.garagetek.com to simply banging together a couple of 2x4s into a makeshift workbench and hanging some shelves on the wall. If you are like me, you don’t have the budget to hire a professional consultant to design and build your garage, nor do you desire the makeshift look and function of a shade tree tossed together workspace. No…you have decided it is time to get your shop organized, functional, and attractive, but you want to do it for reasonable dollars with a custom fit and finish.

Let’s first discuss some of the absolute essentials for the home do-it-yourselfer workshop area:

1. Ample clean workbench space with provisions for a vice.
2. Storage for chemicals, parts, and loose items
3. Sink
4. Bathroom facilities
5. Electrical/lighting
6. Telephone/intercom
7. Media
8. Air conditioning/mini fridge.
9. Seating
10. Decorations

One of the best ways to get up and running fast with ample clean workbench space is to scour your neighbors, local dump, contractors, or any location where you might find some discarded kitchen cabinets and counter tops. For workbench purposes you can make an old kitchen unit work like a champ. Just remember to reinforce the cabinet where needed if you mount a vice. It is also a good idea to securely mount the cabinet to the wall studs since it will surely serve double duty over its life to support large items including cylinder heads, axles, or whatever you are throwing on there.

If you can’t locate any discarded kitchen cabinets take a look at the economy pre-made kitchen cabinets at your local mega warehouse hardware store. You can score some pretty decent deals on ready to go sections that can easily be painted to match your garage theme and mounted in placed in mere minutes. This is one of the fastest and easiest ways to get your workbench area up and running (but also one of the more expensive). You also need to be aware that the economy cabinets are made of particle wood that is prone to disintegrating once exposed to moisture. Not good if you put a old radiator on the bench that leaks down into the cabinet and causes it to dissolve before your eyes!

A more affordable, customized, and durable solution is to build your own with 2x4’s, pre-made laminate counter top, and plywood. You can buy up to 12’ length of laminate counter top in a variety of colors for under $100. This makes an excellent work surface, is easy to wipe clean, and is easy to mount on top of almost any structure. You can level a 2x4 across the wall to rest the back of the counter top in place, and then frame out some legs to complete the bench. With a basic cordless drill, hammer, nails, screws, and saw you can have a professional looking workbench ready for rugged duty in a few minutes. Top it off by framing in the front of the bench and adding some plywood doors. A couple of inexpensive cabinet hinges and you now have a heavy duty workbench with storage below. Paint to match your garage theme and enjoy having secure enclosed cabinet storage with minimal expense with doors custom built to the size and style to match your needs.

When it comes to storage, you can’t ever have enough. The easiest way to complete this is to buy some of those metal storage racks from you local hardware store. While those work great, they look terrible as it is inevitable to get filled with cluttered mix-matched bottles, parts, cans, boxes, and stuff. It is an eyesore that attracts dust and takes away from the look and function of your shop. Here is an easy remedy I doubt you ever considered. You can start with that kind of racked shelving, or build your own right on the wall. Follow this by framing AROUND it with a 2x4 structure. Rough frame the front out for installation of bi-fold or standard doors. I suggest bi-fold doors since they are inexpensive, easy to install, and come in a variety of styles including smooth, louvered, or raised panel. Complete the look with a drywall skin around the top and sides, trim, and paint. Now you have an attractive looking closet in the corner of your garage with a door you can close to protect the items from dust, damage, and of course, the visual cutter of a typical shelf. This allows you to build the closet as large as the space will allow for a fraction of the price of a pre-made standing cabinet. Since it will frame to the ceiling you end up with extra space up top for less used items.

A sink is a must. I can’t tell you how many times I have been to friend’s shops or garages and have to go outside and use a hose, or worse yet go in the house to wash up. That’s no good, especially when it is easy to remedy. A laundry sink can be purchased as low as $20. You don’t need any fancy faucet and can usually suffice by purchasing a newer fancy one for the house kitchen sink (your wife will love you for it) and moving the old kitchen faucet into the garage. There are a variety of ways to connect your plumbing. As always check your local code as needed. First of all, if roughing the shop out from scratch you need to include running water connections. For exiting shops you can tie into an exterior faucet. A simple way to drain is to mount the sink on an exterior wall and run the drain through the wall out on the ground. Hey, what’s the difference between washing your hands this way, or standing outside with the hose and rinsing off over the lawn? It is best to tie into your septic or sewer, but running out and dropping for simple hand washing station is a simple quick and inexpensive way to get it done. Your wife will kiss you for it, and your buddies will appreciate being able to wash up right there inside without having to soak their shoes trying to manage the hose, faucet, and dirty hands. For those of you with laundry hook-ups in the garage, you are in luck! In many cases you can mount your laundry sink right next to the washing machine and tie into the same drain. If you can’t get close enough to do that, you can run T off the hot and cold connection for your washer and run lines to your sink and drain on the wall. You can either use the flexible plumbing line and run it right along the wall or go up and over with hard PVC line down to your sink location. This is an excellent way to have toasty hot water in your shop sink! Your hands will appreciate it.

[69MyWay]

Continued....

Bathroom facilities are best planned during the building of a shop/garage from scratch. It is so easy and inexpensive to add the additional plumbing during the roughing out of the slab than to add it later. In either case, consideration of a way to mount a toilet in your shop area will give your wife another reason to jump for joy. No more greasy hand prints on the master toilet seat, or remnants of your buddies trips to and from your house bathroom on any given weekend while they are over helping you swap the cam in your hot rod. Depending on your shop location to your sewer/septic line you may be surprised how easy it is to bust a portion of the slab near a wall, install the drain, and have a toilet running.

You can never have enough power outlets! Depending on code laws in your area you may or may not have the flexibility to do your own wiring. Believe it or not, standard AC wiring is not that complicated. Just remember (unlike your DC wiring in the family hot rod), the black wire is the hot wire. White is common, and the copper is the ground. Power outlets have a connection on each side to run another outlet. Spending some time in the attic (on wood frame walls) you can usually fish a new wire down to the outlet, tie onto the other side, and run that back though the wall to a new location. You can also grab a junction box in the attic and pull a fresh line to a location of your choice. Spend some time doing your research here to make sure the circuit can handle the load, the proper gauge wire is used, and all safety precautions are used when routing the wire. The old guys at the home improvement warehouses are usually pretty good about making sure you have the right supplies to do the job. Those of you with masonry construction have it much easier. Your power outlets are usually mounted on the wall with the wiring in conduit. It is simple to access that box and run fresh wire and conduit on the wall to the new location for a quick new connection. There is no need to have power chords tangled all over your shop because you only have one outlet! Get creative, spend some time, and get the power where you need it!

Lighting is much the same. There is no need to deal with poor or low lighting in your shop area. Adding additional lighting follows much the same process as wiring additional power outlets. Do your research and get busy! There is no excuse for not having enough lighting where you need it.

Following the same concept, adding a phone line to your shop area is very simple. You can buy phone line in bulk quantities up to 500’ or more. In most cases a 50’ roll will get you where you need to be. You phone line carries a 30 volt charge, so be careful when splicing into your current line. You can get all the connectors you need at the local hardware store. Simply access an existing phone line in the attic, splice in, and then route the new line to an easy convenient location in the shop. If you have a detached workshop, you can usually splice into the phone line where it goes into your house box and run it in underground conduit to your detached workshop. Once you run it through your wall in a suitable location it will be connected to a wall plug and be ready for service. No more excuses for getting the house phone greasy when calling around the local auto parts stores for the best price on a set of new brake pads for the family cruiser! You can also call your local phone company and for a small amount have an additional phone line installed just about anywhere you want it. Hey…nobody likes to climb around in the attic on a summer day so a few dollars to the professional may be well worth your dime.

Here are some great ideas for the family to keep in touch with you while you are out there wrenching away. Baby monitors serve as a great inexpensive intercom system, and they are wireless so installation is as simple as plugging in the wall or adding batteries. Wireless door chimes work great as well. You and your family come up with a code. One ring means to come in the house. Two rings means pick up the phone. Three rings means…, well, you get the idea. Your wife will appreciate being able to push a button on the wall and see you come running from the shop. No more yelling out the backdoor, or having to make sure she is decent incase your buddies stopped over when she wants to come out and get you to come in the house. These can be bought for less than $20, and often baby monitors can be had for free as your buddies with children that have outgrown them are looking to give them away.

The next essential is more of a want than a need. That is the ability to access your favorite form of media from the workshop or garage. Reference the ideas above about accessing your current connection in the attic to grab a coax line from your current cable or satellite line. You can easily T off and run a fresh line out to your shop for television. Wall mounted television brackets work great to get the TV up out of the shop area, avoid taking up valuable counter space, and get the television closer to the cable connection coming out of the ceiling. A good wall mount can be purchased for less than $50, and 100’ of quality coax can be purchased for less than $30. A couple hours of your time and you can have the Speed channel piped right into your workspace. Check with your local cable company as they will run additional lines for you as well. Your family will appreciate it too as your wife can come outside and catch her favorite shows while you are wrenching away on the hot rod.

There is nothing worse than wrenching on the hot rod while pouring sweat especially when it is so easily remedied. A wall or window air conditioning unit is fairly easy to install. Most units will run off standard wall plugs. Even in poorly insulated garage areas, some ice cold air pumping into the room can drop the overall room temperature and make hot August afternoons more bearable. You may be surprised when your wife shows more interest in your project when she can come outside, have easy access to the phone, enjoy her favorite cable television, and chill out in the frosty cool breeze of the window a/c unit. When mommas happy, the hot rod budget gets bigger!

Of course, a mini-fridge is a given. They don't take up much space and don't use much electricity. Keeping some cold beverages close at hand is a great way to reward your buddies for helping out with the ride, and to cool down while you think through the next mod on your car.

Sometimes you just have to take a break. What do you do? Sit on a bucket, old tire, engine short block? No, no, no…get a real shop chair! You have a ton of options in this category ranging from store bought chairs, house discards, to cool custom made seats. Let’s focus on the cool custom made seats. Been to the auto salvage yard lately? There are hundreds of different bucket seats just waiting for a new home. With some scrap metal and a little time behind the welder you can turn a 1994 Ford Escort bucket seat into a throne fit for an automotive king! Add some wheel casters to the bottom and now you have a rolling throne capable of seating and entertaining. You might bring the wife with you to the salvage yard to pick out a couple of seats. She is more likely to hang out with you talking on the phone, watching television, chilling by the a/c when sitting in a seat of her choice from some cool donor car (and don’t forget how happy she is that the family bathroom is no longer covered in greasy hand and foot prints!). In many cases you can get free seats from body shop, repair shops, and salvage yards. What you spend on this cool garage mod is all in what kind of seat you want to wrap around your butt. Don’t forget you can yank the bench seats from vans and SUVs to make seating for three in a snap.


Now that you have clean fresh workbench space, storage, sink, toilet, phone, television, a/c, and seating…you are down to the decoration phase. While posters and calendar pin-ups are cool, don’t discount the value of your old car parts. Now is the time to go through your piles of valve covers, oil pans, timing gears, rims, emblems, door handles, and other cool parts. With a little time and consideration you can piece these parts together to create awesome garage decorations for that personal touch while at the same time cleaning out your storage shelf and saving space in the landfill. Even an old clutch disc makes a cool decoration as it can serve as a conversation piece, and a reminder of where you spent the last $800 on the hot rod.

[69MyWay]

continued:


Getting started begins with a solid plan. You need to take inventory of the tools, equipment, parts, and general supplies you regularly keep on hand. Consider what kind of projects you do so you can determine the amount of workbench space and open floor area needed. Sit down with paper and pencil and sketch out some ideas. Try to imagine what kind of projects you will be doing and how best to arrange your workspace and storage to fit those project goals. Don’t forget to plan some wiggle room as equipment and tools will come and go. You may not own a sandblaster now, but it could be in your future. Leaving some floor or closet space will be a big benefit in the long run. Go through all your tools and supplies one by one. You will find all kind of items that should have been discarded (or returned to your neighbor) years ago that will only free up more space for necessary tools and supplies.

Estimate your building expense by working off your sketch. You can rough out the linear feet of lumbar, hardware items, and supplies from the sketch. This estimating procedure will make your trip to the hardware store more efficient and reduce the need for return trips. You may also have been mailed a 10% off coupon from one of the major hardware stores. Put as many supplies on that one bill as possible to maximize your discount. If the store offers a credit card with 90 days same as cash, you can spread out the cost over 3 months and make it a bit easier to swallow all at once. Don’t forget to invest in a large tarpaulin to protect your tools, parts, supplies, and lumbar that will be moved outside during the build.

A couple of building techniques to consider include building actual stud wall off your exiting garage walls. Short walls that extend the depth of the workbench increase the amount of wall square footage and visually segregate portions of the work area. For example, you can install two 6’ counter tops. Between the counter tops build a stud wall facing the end of each counter top about 3’ between the walls. This will create a nook to store large bulky items like engine hoists or engines on stands. You can use the wall space adjacent to each side for hanging of other tools or supplies. This area can also be closed in with a door hung in the front to create a storage closet between the workbenches. Drywall is a great material to use on your stud walls. However, you will have to use anchors when screwing brackets and other items into these walls not backed by a stud. Plywood walls don’t look as nice as finished drywall. However, they will allow driving nails or screws virtually anywhere in the surface to hang or support other items.

Integrating peg board, slotted shelf board, and other pre-made garage storage solutions into your plan will only increase the flexibility of the workspace. The wire closet made open shelving is easy to install between your newly created stud walls and allows light to travel through the open shelves to keep the workspace bright. You can maximize storage space by investing in plastic storage boxes to slide onto the closet made wire shelving units. Dollar stores, Big Lots, and others usually have great deals on plastic containers you can use to store your parts, tools, and supplies.

Don’t forget your attic space. Installing an attic door with stairs will take the better part of an afternoon and open hundreds of square foot for storage. Some plywood runners in the attic and a hanging shop light will allow you to easily store items safely in the attic with easy access. The more you can store in the attic the more space you can create in the workshop.

The last item to consider is a portable storage shed. Getting your lawnmower, edger, wheelbarrow, leaf blower, shovels, rakes, gas cans, and other yard and house maintenance items out of the shop space is always a plus. Be sure to check your local codes and ordinances regarding the style, size, and location of storage sheds on your property.

Whatever you decide to do, remember that spending some time upfront to organize and personalize your workspace will streamline your efficiency when tackling the weekend warrior projects and increase the value of workspace to your home and family. Get creative, have fun, and look for cool ways to recycle materials to save money and have fun!