Saturday, December 29, 2012

setting up shop

The sharper eyed regular readers of this blog will have noticed one thing about my new garage: it's about a third of the size of the Green Room. This meant that once the car was rolled in, and the rest of my stuff piled around it, there wasn't really much room to do any work :( Add in the complications arising from moving house for the seventh time in the last eight years (!), and it's no surprise that several months elapsed with the following view pretty much intact:


I knew moving was going to slow down the project a LOT, and when I did finally get some free time, it was mostly devoted to making some extra space in the garage. I started by building a very strong and sturdy platform over the front of the car, which I can use for storage.

2"x4" joists supported  by a pair of 4"x6" posts
add closet doors
and start piling it up...

After a seriously long time spent shuffling boxes around in the dim glow from one light bulb, I had my workbench in place, some shelves on the wall, and a huge pile of boxes. It took the best part of three months to get this far, because I've been busy with other stuff.


Later in the story another platform got built at the back corner of the garage and I started getting stuff organized a little bit. The hardest part of this was trying to cut lumber on my miter saw without any space to work in.


Slowly the pile of boxes got smaller as stuff was unpacked, shuffled around or thrown out. I also sold off a lot of the excess furniture I've acquired over the last few years.


Really felt like I was getting somewhere when I had space to put some shelves up.


A few more weekends invested and this is pretty much how my new workshop will look for the rest of this garage. Now, back to the car....With a little bit of luck, 2013 will see the car running again! Happy New Year :)