Bobs new home, Garagemahal wana be

I have been moving around with work recently which forces me to move between houses yearly. As such, I am stuck in rentals. The rental I have been in for the last year had a bit of a disappointing garage. It was 18' deep by 19'6 wide with 9 ft ceilings. It was very cramped and the paint was dingy. The new garage is a great improvement, 12' ceilings, 24' deep by 19'4 wide. I had wanted to paint the garage gloss white with a 30 accent stripe along the bottom in a charcoal. Unfortunately life got in the way and I had to move and get the garage prepped in a weekend.

Day 1:

The previous resident had used sheet rock anchors to hang things instead of screwing into studs. I had to fill 33 half inch to quarter inch anchor holes. I I properly patched the holes and then I painted with a paint that was left in the house. The patches match the rest of the walls about 97%, but they are not perfect. Unfortunately I hadn't thought to start documenting my progress on day 1.

Day 2:

This was the moving day. I got the whole house moved in a single day with two friends helping me. During this, I realized that for someone who moves a lot, I own a whole heck of a lot of garage stuff. Back breaking work Over the weekend, 12 man hours were spent total on the inside house and the garage has 50+ man hours spent on it. Priorities!

Originally everything garage wise was piled on the floor helter skelter and I could barely walk because there wasn't an inch of floor showing. With some hard work, by the end of day 2 the garage looked like this.

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I managed to get both the sports car and the dirt bike in!

It only gets better from here. Keep it up.

Day 3:

A bunch of progress was made. I have to spare tires for my truck. The attic door opening is in an akward spot and is only 30 in wide. The tires are 33.2 in diameter so its a no go. to solve this, I hung them up on the wall over the garage door. I used 2 large hooks per tire and each hook is bolted to the 2x6 behind it with 2 1/4" lag bolts. Both beads of the tire rest on each hook. Is this a safe method to hang tires? I am a little worried about it. I would hate to have them come tumbling down onto the cars.

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Hopefully that shows the tires well.

As far as the rest of the garage goes,

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It is getting there. The plan is to leave the entire left side of the back wall and the left side wall clear of everything. That is necessary to get my truck in and far enough over that I can open the door (will be backed in).

You can see my grind wheels and air compressor to the left of my workbench. Originally I had wanted them on the right wall where the dirt bike is. The dirt bike got that spot though because I couldnt figure out where else I could put it and still get all 3 vehicles into the garage. The dirt bike is taken out rarely. Currently I have my jack and jack stands slid under it.

Does anyone have any ideas for a layout that may work better than the one I am currently setting up?

Day 4:

Today, I did very little. I washed my trash cans and then cooked, did laundry, and all of the other chores that I neglected all weekend.

Tomorrow I will get back into gear on the garage.



Organization wise, its still not all off of the floor yet. The end goal is to have my truck, the sports car, and the dirt bike in the garage while still having access to the workbench.

It all fit!

As of today, everything is in. Glad that part is over. Below are some picks of the final result of the move in.

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Below is another picture of how the spare tires for my truck were stored. It also has some of my spare parts MTB stored. I usually work in the garage with the door up, so where they are means that I will rarely see them. A large plus.

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The car and the truck, I can open either's door all the way. There are 3'10 between the two there. Im very happy with the distance I got between the two.


Turns out i miss measured and my MTB in the back left corner is a bit low. It was supposed to be above the truck tailgate. It is......mostly, but its low enough I cant back all the way in.

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Now for the projects.

The current list of projects is:

-Paint the pegboard silver
-Paint the workbench red, with charcoal top (this and the peg board will then match the paint on my restored vice)
-Paint the stairs leading into the house charcoal
-Paint the metal channal shelving in the right of the picture red, with silver fasteners, and charcoal for the plywood shelves
-restore the blue toolbox on the right of the workbench to match the red black and silver craftsman one on the left
-Mount my last 3 led overhead lights

That should work for a color scheme right? Im not exactly style conscious.

I am considering building some cabinets from plywood, 8' tall, 4' wide' 2' deep to hide store things in. I want to end up with a garage that looks like the "12 gauge garage" with everything hidden. I already have a very efficient high density storage method, but want to progress to getting everything hidden. Does anyone have suggestions on the best way to achieve that? Its made more difficult since I move often and don't want to build anything into garages I cannot move out relatively easily.

Any chance you can make to Iowa?

Slow Lane,
Well......I stopped making progress for quite a while.

Work picked up and took up some of my time. Then I went and started dating again and somehow I had no free time to work in my garage : headscrat

But I finally laid down the law with her, and I get my garage time again!! Back to the projects I was supposed to do months ago.

So back to the overall layout of the garage.

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Main shot, both cars still fit. Im looking at picking up a C5 corvette to replace the RX8. Its not too much bigger so should still fit.

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The suzuki dual sport bike from the earlier pictures is gone off to a better home. I didnt ride it very much and it took up space. Its place got filled with the radial arm saw I was given by my father. Not sure I really like the saw. It seems to be more of a pain to use than a miter chop saw and table saw setup. It had a great price though, free.

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Its a nice saw, its really well bult. Super heavy duty. PITA to get out of the bed of my truck.

I stopped by my parents place over the holidays. That was when I got the radial arm saw.

My father and I went looking through his 5 gal buckets of seconds and thirds tools. At the end of the trip I came home with some new tools. Thanks dad

View media item 56277Pile of tools from the trip:
near full set of williams superwrenches (orange bag) the black ones are also williams
square spud wrench (downside, its damaged will be covered below)
hammer
rubber mallet
assorted screwdrivers

Not shown in the pictures:
Chemistry tool camp stand, w/ a bunch of different clamp setups
hacksaw
coping saw
2 drywall saws
large assortment of 3/8 in sockets that helped fill up my truck tool bag
basic set of wood chisels
hatchet

View media item 56270View media item 56271I also got a set of 3 USA made chanellock 420 pliers. Anyone know when these might have been made? They are great quality, feel really sturdy in the hand. Way better than the task force ones I had been using.

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I also was given these 4 drawers from an old desk 30" deep and 6.5" tall. They are nice heavy duty steel. I plan on putting 3 of them onto my workbench. Im saving the 4th to put onto a welding workbench.

Now onto the new tool aquisitions

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These are the Sunex 1/2 in drive Metric and SAE master sets as well as the 3/8 master set. Bought these during the rebate period earlier this year. Getting them for $300 off was awesome.

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Then, over christmas, sunex had their 12 days of christmas giveaway. I was one of the winners. I won a the Sunex 9922 SAE V-Groove Combination Ratcheting Wrench Set. Who isnt stoked about more shiny tools? I havent needed to use them yet. Anyone know if they are a good set? Im trying to decide if I should buy the matching Metric set.

View media item 56265It seems these have some kind of fancy "flank drive" ish head. Never tried one like this. Looking forward to it. Same with the spline ratcheting end on these.

Did a little project or two in the garage. Two of the ratchets (1/2" and 3/8") I have been using for years came from my father. Like a good %50 of my tools, these are likely older than me. It was reaching a point where these ratchets started skipping every time I tried to use them. I pulled them apart before I started looking for a re build kit.

The inside of them was chock the block full dried out grease set up like soap. Completly jammed, %50 of the tooth engagement was blocked due to this. In a moment of genius I didnt take any pictures of them looking that bad.

I wiped them out with paper towels and a pick to clear out the gunk. Afterwords, this was the best I could get. 10x better but not perfect.
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Then I tossed the parts all into my dirty acetone bath jar. Pulled em out and looked like this.
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Much much better

Layed all the parts out then started the re build.
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Whats wrong with that picture? oh yeah, i mixed the parts between the 1/2 and 3/8. Realized that one real quick.

I read a thread or two on hear on what the optimal lube for a ratchet was. Seems to be a consensus to use something light enough to avoid a thick layer that messes up the tooth engagement. No heavy grease. Threw some lighter weight oil on the teeth, a very light smear of light grease on the front and back plates.

Back together.
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Little project getting rid of the standard horrible drain on my air compressor. Funny story about this one, it got me in a bit of trouble with my girlfriend. The parts arrived on my birthday and I couldn't resist running out to the garage to put them on as soon as I got home from the dinner she took me to. Makes sense right

Not my brightest moment

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The 1/4" ball valve is great. Wished i had done this sooner.

On the end of the valve, I used a NPT female cap and drilled a 1/16" hole at 12 and 6 o'clock. I did this to create an orifice plate to move the pressure drop away from the valve when I dump the 150psi tank.

I got outside and made some more progress. It was cold lol.

I cleaned my workbench off and moved it out to the center of my garage to start adding the drawers to the workbench.

As I started building, I realized I made a great mistake. In my "frugalness" aka cheapness I re used a bunch of wood I had had hanging around in my garage for years. I made 50% of the cuts and was starting to put all it together when I started wondering why none of the wood lined up quite right. I was sure I measured perfectly.

Turns out......not a single piece of that wood was straight or flat.

So I bought some big old pipe clamps and clamped it all down while gluing screwing etc.

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And so much better!

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And now it has some nice paint. Still need to re wire the power to the workbench post painting.

Added the drawers in. The face-plates will be getting painted black. Shiny black like the craftsman toolbox. The handles are aluminium so I will polish them so it all matches the drawers as well.

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I have a fourth drawer and it wouldn't fit width wise. I ended up making a cubby over there instead figuring out how to fit a last drawer. Its a perfect spot to stick my big outdoor levels and 2 big squares. Im sure I will find many other things to shove in there. A box of gloves, safety glasses etc.

The top of the workbench will be painted white and then have a poly or epoxy coat put on top. I think

Im debating getting some metal to cover it with instead. Do any of yall have suggestions on the finishing touches?