Between 265 & 485 SQ/FT The 12-Gauge Garage

This is a long thread. I won't try and stop anyone from reading all of it. But for a more-concise tour of the place, it'll only take you 10 minutes to go through this video:




And here are some recent pictures. If you go through the thread from the beginning, you'll be able to see the garage get to this point:


























It's a working garage:



And I do have a fancy sign for it:





I first posted a thread about my garage back in March of 2009. I called it the ‘Poor Man’s Retro Retreat’ back then because my budget for it had been low ($500) and I’d used a kind of old-fashioned color scheme when I painted it. It’s a garage I’ve liked a lot. It’s had everything I’ve needed. I’ve gotten a lot of work done in it.

So naturally, I had to go through and re-do pretty much every component in the place.

Why? Blame this board. It gets you thinking about different ideas and projects for the garage every time you visit. I know a lot of you out there know what I’m talking about.

Since so much has changed, I’m going to start a new thread about it. If that bugs you, I apologize. Click the close button on the window and move on. If the moderators don’t like it, they can merge this with the old thread. I don’t want to clutter up the board unnecessarily.

The garage can’t really be called the ‘Poor Man’s Retro Retreat’ anymore because I’ve spent too much money on it. It’s still pretty modest, by the standards of many of the garages on this board. It’s pretty humble, still -- a suburban two-car garage tucked around behind the house on my tiny 1/8-acre lot.

But by my own personal standards (I’m very cheap), it’s now a pretty expensive operation. I would guess that I’ve now put another $2,000 into the place.


THE HISTORY

During the 2007 Writers Guild strike, I went through my completely useless junk bin of a garage and tried to get a little organized for the first time in my then 43-year-old life. Both my wife and I write for a living, so we were both out of work for the duration -- I was understandably cautious with spending money. But on the other hand, I couldn’t work -- so I had all the time in the world. I gave myself a $500 budget and attempted to re-use or re-purpose as much of the **** filling my garage as possible, while moving most of what was left to a dumpster. Every day, after a shift spent pounding the pavement on a picket line, I’d work on it. The last touch was to paint it in sort-of-early-1960s shades of green, yellow and tan.

I was pretty happy with it.



I also built a shed for the stuff that would normally clutter up a garage as small as mine. I’d never done much carpentry, but having a garage that I could actually move around in made it easier to get a little creative with the roof lines.



And then one day I saw a sale on ceramic tile at Home Depot and I jumped into a .68/sf scheme to both tile my garage and teach myself how to set tile. It worked out all right, considering how unlevel my 84-year-old garage floor was. I ended up with a nicer-to-use and nicer-to-look-at garage for another $400 invested. (I also ended up with bigger shoulders, since grouting that much tile is a pretty serious amount of work.)



Then I joined Garage Journal. It didn’t happen overnight, but -- slowly, steadily, you can’t fight it forever -- I started to no longer see my finished garage as finished anymore.

It was just getting started.

THE GARAGE ON OCTOBER 24, 2012



I’m calling it ‘The 12-Gauge Garage’ because when I built a steel-topped bench for it, I discovered Strong Hold Cabinets, a Wisconsin company that makes ridiculously strong cabinets. They claim that they’re the strongest metal cabinets you can buy. They’re rated to hold 1900 pounds per shelf. That’s definitely stronger than I have any need for in my garage (and watch out, they’re expensive, too). But the one that was holding up the steel plate for my bench -- well, it just felt good to open and close the thing. Is that crazy?

This is how it looked when I bought it.



Here it is painted and with a 510-pound bench on top of it.



I liked using that cabinet so much that I started keeping an eye out for other used Strong Hold cabinets on eBay.

With a lot of patience, and letting about 50 of the cabinets go to other buyers (I’m cheap, there’s no two ways about it), I finally lucked into a 4’ wide model for $62. This is a 760-pound cabinet that lists for (I think) $2,300 new. I snapped it up, and even got a little less cheap when I sourced a second one for $148. Then I got a Lyon cabinet for a shallower space near my metal bench (it’s made of 14-gauge steel, not 12-gauge). Including the short Strong Hold cabinet I’d already bought, I had about $600 in the four steel cabinets for my garage. It’s about 2,300 pounds of cabinetry.

Getting them to my house and getting them installed into my garage is a very long story I won’t tell here. I did document one bad day when I basically knocked one of the 760-pound cabinets onto my Porsche. (Yeah, you read that right. I ended up not hurting the car too badly, but still -- a pretty bone-headed moment.)



Did I mention that they’re heavy? Each of the doors on the 4’ wide cabinets weighs 85 pounds. They open and close easily, but it has the feel of opening a bank safe.



THE BASIC FACTS

The garage is small -- 20’x22’. I store one car in it and use the rest as my home shop. In addition to the normal home and car repairs, I do some woodworking projects and some welding projects in it. It’s not lit like an operating room. I don’t have beer signs, gas pumps or televisions in it. It’s built to remind me of working with my father in his shop in Chicago, where I grew up.



I'll take it wall by wall. In my initial clean-up of the garage, I added a fold-down table for wood projects. It had pre-drilled holes for my router table and was at the same height as the other bench in the garage so I could use it for cutting long pieces of lumber. I liked it so much that when I took up welding, I added a second, steel table for welding. Both of them fold up along the first wall of the garage so I can park my car there. But when I back the car out I can lower one or both of them for work. It’s a really handy thing to have when you’re working in such a small space.

In the latest update of the garage, I got rid of the yellow paint on this wall. I’ve decided the only two colors on the wall will be the tan and the green.

Here’s the old yellow:



The back wall is the one that’s changed the most this month. Here’s the way it used to look. I had banker’s boxes on shelves made of hollow-core doors and some crooked cabinets that had been put in sometime before I’d owned the house.



The main bench I was using was pretty simple, too. A solid core door over a frame with three wooden drawers I’d saved when we’d torn a closet out of the house.



I tore out everything and put in cabinets up above the line that had been formed by a piece of aluminum up above my bench. I extended that line across the whole garage, now, with wooden cabinets up above it, mostly with sliding doors. I can keep a lot of stuff up there that I don’t need to access all the time.



Down below, I adapted both of the Strong Hold cabinets to store as much stuff as possible.





One of them now has seven wooden shelves, each holding six bins I sourced from (huh?) Ikea. I keep all kinds of different stuff -- everything from extension cords and trouble lights to hinges, casters, light switches, you name it -- in those bins. I got labels for them so I don’t have to remember where I put what.

For the other cabinet, I wanted to have vertical storage so I could store a small ladder, a broom, and hang my overalls and welding jacket up. So there’s a small space for that, and then a set of normal shelves. On the doors of the cabinets, I put about a hundred bins for fasteners. It’s still not completely sorted out and organized, but I’m getting closer.



The doors can open with plenty of extra space when the car is parked in there.

Putting in the steel cabinets let me move my main bench 30 inches to the left, which allowed me to move my tool boxes to the back wall. They used to divide the garage, and I never liked the way it looked. I also got a Harbor Freight tool box to function as the base for the bench. I painted it to match the Sears boxes.







The next wall over has my ‘compliance station,’ which is a steel-topped bench on another Strong Hold cabinet. Next to that, I’ve got one last steel cabinet, a Lyon, which I belt cut and rewelded so it would be short enough to fit in this space.



I still have the sink and a small bench that I built to surround it. I’ve left the yellow paint on those walls -- mostly because I’m too lazy to re-paint it.

Those are the walls. But I also added an kitchen-island-type bench in the middle of the garage, and a new butcher-block-topped bench up front. The garage has eight work surfaces in it, now (three steel, five wood), and a ninth (a steel table) suspended from the ceiling above my car.

I stained the tops of the three main benches dark with an opaque stain and marine varnish on top of it. I’m still on the fence about this decision -- I don’t want benches that look so nice you’re afraid to use them, but I also was getting tired of all my benches being the same unfinished wood color.



We’ll see how they hold up.

I try to keep stuff off of the floor and out of plain sight.









When you’ve got a place to put everything, you can clean the whole place up really fast with something like this:



Well, that’s the basic rundown of the place. It’s not going to set the world on fire or re-invent the idea of a garage, but I’ve got to admit that I really enjoyed putting it together and I’m really enjoying getting stuff done in it. I got it all clean for the pictures, but it will get messy on a regular basis.

And, of course, I like having a place to keep the race car:



Any questions?

why do you have decorated tissue paper near the sink?




Ohh, and this is one of my all time fav's.

Thanks for the new write-up and pixs

Jack,

Of all of the many garages on here, when I work on plans for my garage, yours is the one I contemplate and want to emulate. That's the highest compliment I can pay you. It's a space that I'd like to work in, and a space that I'd like to have for my own. It looks great, and looks like it functions great, too. Your attention to detail is to be commended.

(Insert wise crack here about how you dropped one of your ten ton shelving units on the Porsche, to bring your ego back in check)...

Really looks great. Really.

It's awesome Jack. I can really relate to your projects because I also truly enjoy taking "nothing" and turning it into "something".

Inspiring in both that I'm getting organized for the first time in my life and I'm in roughly a 20x22.

Thanks for sharing (and continuing to share) your ideas and updates.

Jack , I'm impressed with your set up. I'd call it a working space vs a place of lounging. My humble congratulations on your work in progress !

TONE said:

why do you have decorated tissue paper near the sink?




Ohh, and this is one of my all time fav's.

Thanks for the new write-up and pixs

Click to expand...

I'm guessing because it has a green box that matches the garage

BTW, your shop reminds me a lot of my local inspiration, he does things his way and they make way more sense than what other 'experts' suggest. Hey, anyone with that many woodworking and steel working tools gets my vote. That reminds me, I really need to get a new bench to mount my grinder and learn how to weld.

Props from the P-Car crowd

How's the tile been holding up?

that garage is simply amazing. i love how everything has a place and the workspace is superb. can i ask what kind of hinges you used on your drop down benches? standard undustrial door hinges? thanks

any pictures of the table suspended over the car?

sounds like a neat way to save space. any info on this table would b great

I like the updates! BTW, who do you write for?

I hearby order you to cease posting nifty creations with cool cabinetry sourced for cheap. I'm very busy here - busy, busy, busy and you are making Sulley lose his focus!

I like your repainted HF bottom cabinet. That was one of the first things I noticed. It would go right with my other Craftsman boxes. Does Sears carry that paint or is it a Rustoleum color? Nice collection of C-clamps too for a hobbyist.

I'm inspired for sure. I need to get some kind of hitch-style mount like that for my grinder.

How in the WORLD did you get the cabinets in under those tight clearances and not crack any tile?

The whole place looks absolutely magnificent. Great job!

Very innovative use of space, and a great example (for guys like me) who have limited space, and how to maximize it's use.

Where do you store your woodworking materials, and excess materials?

Falcon67 said:

I hearby order you to cease posting nifty creations with cool cabinetry sourced for cheap. I'm very busy here - busy, busy, busy and you are making Sulley lose his focus!

Click to expand...

+1
By far one of my faves. If you run out room for your ideas, I humbly offer you my garage to apply your wares.

I have always liked your garage. It inspires me every time I look at it!

I concur with the rest.

Something that allows the commoner think that "we can do that".

Unlike watch Old Yankee Workshop with his "insert project" machine that makes everything, you started with and keep providing great ideas for the rest of us.

Thanks very much guys. What would I do without a board like this? My wife just rolls her eyes at the place. My neighbors don't get it; they see me unloading steel cabinets and come over to tell me they think I'm crazy.

lawfarm said:

Insert wise crack here about how you dropped one of your ten ton shelving units on the Porsche, to bring your ego back in check...

Click to expand...

My heart still speeds up when I flash back to that moment where I saw the thing going over like a domino, with the car right in its path. It's really kind of a miracle that the damage was so easily fixable.

TONE said:

why do you have decorated tissue paper near the sink?

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Dude, I use that to fill out the top of the shiny gift bag before I sprinkle on some glitter and shoot it with a squeeze of perfume.

My wife brought that out while I was working because I had a cold and was blowing my nose into my sleeve too much.

It does kind of match the color scheme.

fatrhino said:

How's the tile been holding up?

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Better than it ought to. I think tile is fine for a shop like this where you're going to do carpentry and minor car work. But welding slag burns it. When you grind something too long and the debris gets hot, it burns the glazing on the tiles. And I do have a small chip, which I suspect is from one of those cabinets. You can also see where I had to leave a cut-out that was from a pillar supporting the old shelves. One weekend, I'll drop some new tiles in where I have damage. It's not the perfect surface, but I think it's better (and cheaper) than most of the high-level epoxies. If you're going to do a lot of welding, though, I think naked concrete is probably the only way to go, long term.

Gds14r said:

what kind of hinges you used on your drop down benches? standard undustrial door hinges?

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There are three 4-1/2" hinges on the woodworking table (that's the leaf length, basically the same length as the pin), and five 5-1/2" hinges on the steel table. All of them are screwed into the wall studs, and the woodworking bench has a support underneath the table at each hinge point so that the stress isn't on the hinge when the table's in use -- the weight is sitting on the supports. But they're standard hinges. Just big ones.

tekkerAMCer said:

any pictures of the table suspended over the car? sounds like a neat way to save space. any info on this table would b great

Click to expand...

It's one of the few things in the garage that I think is a bad idea (although I just don't have a better alternative). The table weighs a couple hundred pounds. I think that's too much weight to suspend above a race car -- especially if you're a guy who already knocked a cabinet over on one. But here's a photo. Cables go through pulleys and combine to a single cable before connecting to a winch. You need enough cable length so that it can extend all the way down to the floor, and then that much cable length again for the single line that runs to the winch. So in my shop the cables follow and L-shaped path to the wall above the man door.



My wife saw it and said something about the 'Sword of Damocles.' I have a separate set of chains that hold it in place when it's at rest up there, so there would have to be multiple simultaneous failures for it to come down. But it's not an idea I'm very proud of. I suspect that sooner or later, it's going to come down.

Tman said:

I like the updates! BTW, who do you write for?

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I write screenplays, so I work for different studios in Los Angeles.

Falcon67 said:

I hearby order you to cease posting nifty creations with cool cabinetry sourced for cheap. I'm very busy here - busy, busy, busy and you are making Sulley lose his focus!

Click to expand...

I promise. I'm done. (And thanks.)

eborcim said:

I like your repainted HF bottom cabinet. That was one of the first things I noticed. It would go right with my other Craftsman boxes. Does Sears carry that paint or is it a Rustoleum color? Nice collection of C-clamps too for a hobbyist.

Click to expand...

It's Rustoleum Regal Red professional enamel and Rustoleum semi-gloss black. Looks good at arm's length, and hasn't scratched off. I lightly scuffed it and wiped it down with acetone before priming with self-etching primer and painting.

Handyman163 said:

How in the WORLD did you get the cabinets in under those tight clearances and not crack any tile?

Click to expand...

I moved very slowly, with a lot of levers and some furniture dollies. Normally, these are moved with a fork lift, but I cut all the legs off. I positioned them, and then built the cabinets around them.



They are never moving again.

Ripped said:

Where do you store your woodworking materials, and excess materials?

Click to expand...

I store some steel in the space behind the Harbor Freight tool box, under the bench along the back wall. I also have room for long stock above the garage door.



I also made some little roofing pieces along one side of the house where I store 4x8 sheets and 8'-20' lengths of steel. I also have some bins under the kitchen-island-style-bench with small scraps of wood and steel. I also keep some steel scrap in the shed where I keep the welder and Oxy-Acetylene rig.

Jack,
Wonderful recap. I like the two colors instead of three. It's a bit cleaner.

I hereby predict your next project is likely to be the sink area! First you're gonna want to make an overhead cabinet for those exposed Porsche manuals - sliding doors? light can over the sink? Then, you'll undoubtedly decide to enclose below the sink (somehow incorporating a Craftsman red/black combo?) and finally, you'll want the counter top to be a similar dark brown as the other work surfaces, but since you'll want it waterproof I'm guessing you'll comes up with either a dark brown wood appearing laminate OR tile. (Have I called it, or have I call it?) If you end up with one of those 500 lb. steel cabinets below that sink....well, I wouldn't be surprised! Best, Dan

Jack, great write up and revamp! I always liked your shop before and am amazed at what you did to it (like it even more now too). Just amazing how much more open space you gained during this remodel.

Anyway, what's the purpose of the table that's suspended from the ceiling by cables and how stable is it at working height? Looks cool as heck but just wondering what you actually intend to use it for.

I like the fact that this shop was built with sweat equity, rather than big bucks, very nice.

Nuts

Jack,
You've done more with $2,500 than anyone else has done with $25,000. Awesome garage and when I finish mine you will see the details I lifted...
Awesome!

Good stuff but I would hate to retrive those big pipe wrenches on a regular basis. I like you try to keep my stuff out of sight when not in use but I try to make the heavy stuff EZ to access.

Jack, Great place! All you need now is a silver bucket with ice and BEvERages on that table next to the garage door! Looks great. I like how you restored all the cabinents. I think it was worth the time and effort. keep it up!

Jack

You inspired me to make the most of my garage. I'm too am cheap but want to make my garage as nice as possible.

I can't wait to start to weld. I'd love a shop table/desk like that.

Simply AWESOME!

Dan in Pasadena said:

I hereby predict your next project is likely to be the sink area!

Click to expand...

You might be right. But I'm resisting. I've got a thing I want to make for the kid next, and I pretty much spent all my January free time out in the garage -- working on the garage. Even to me, that seems a little bit crazy.

ovilla said:

What's the purpose of the table that's suspended from the ceiling by cables and how stable is it at working height? Looks cool as heck but just wondering what you actually intend to use it for.

Click to expand...

The legs are sitting on top of it. It bolts together with two bolts, and then I can set it up wherever I want. I used it (and another just like it) when I was building my fence. It's a good sturdy base, although why I'm going to need a ninth work surface in that garage is a very valid question. I think the answer is that I'm too cheap to throw it out.

This is the only picture I've got handy.

wfopete said:

Good stuff but I would hate to retrive those big pipe wrenches on a regular basis. I like you try to keep my stuff out of sight when not in use but I try to make the heavy stuff EZ to access.

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I agree. This setup is pretty custom to me, and I've only used those wrenches a couple of times. If I used them more often, they'd get different placement.

Nice fab table.

Here's another picture of the place. This one shows the color a little more accurately -- there's less of an incandescent yellow hue to it.

Trying to figure out which is the best inspiration... your work on the garage, or your work on the black beauty... I'm going with the car, but it was a close thing ;-)

I enjoyed reading this thread as much as the first thread you posted. Jack you did a fantastic job with lots of good ideas on laying out your shop. Enjoy the fruits of you labor.

I like the idea of the removable grinder ( wire wheel) it looks like you have hitch reciever tube for other removable tools... like what else?

I am entertaining the idea of combining a few of your items.

A couple angle iron pieces about 3 inches apart, maybe 2ft long, hanging down from the wall with a 6" grinder mounted to the end, with a brace. Kind of like your tables/anvil.

You seem to be a pretty good engineer, so let us know when its done, and we can copy it!

My only problem with this is that I'm primarily a woodworker and now you're making me want to weld.
Very nice garage, though. Great job. I'll echo the sentiments of a few others and say that I appreciate the way you've salvaged, adapted or created things to fit your needs.

Jack Olsen said:

In the latest update of the garage, I got rid of the yellow paint on this wall. I’ve decided the only two colors on the wall will be the tan and the green.

Here’s the old yellow:

Click to expand...

You should get a royalty...

http://www.vansantent.com/Bench_Solution.htm

I thought of your solution when I saw this.

I like the way Jack's up swing table covers his wall of clamps and tools better than this pro system.

Now if there were a way for the support mechanisms to be hidden like on the down swing one, you'd really have something. It could be done, but the supports would come from the wall down to the top of the table surface and would be in the way.

Cebby said:

You should get a royalty...

http://www.vansantent.com/Bench_Solution.htm

I thought of your solution when I saw this.

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The guy that owns Bench Solution is married to my ex-girlfriend. It's a good thing she's gorgeous, or their kids wouldn't stand a chance.

Jack,
Saw this cabinet & my first thought was 'this would go great in Jack's garage'




I think it was at this point that I finally realised that I'm a garge addict!

Gedore are a German company manufacture quality cabinets & also some tools.

Postage would be a downer...