Small but funtional

[Tom'86M635CSi]

My shop is clean for once so I decided to take a few pictures. When I was looking at houses 9 years ago I must have driven by this house a hundred times but ignored it because it only had a one car attached brick garage. When I actually read the real estate listing, I noticed that this garage had an attached workshop. The prior owner built this 20'X20' wood working shop onto the back of the original garage. When I saw the workshop I realized that you could easily work on a car in there.

The first step was to rip out all existing drywall because I could tell that the prior owner was a SCAREY electrician. I striped the room down to bare studs. No drywall,no insulation and not a strand of electrical wire. I pulled 100 amps from the 200 amp house panel into a new panel in the garage. I rewired, insulated and drywalled. The next problem was the entrance from the original garage to the shop was a 30" man door in the back brick wall of the original front garage. I put in a 9' X 1/2" angle iron header and blew a 8' wide by 7' high hole in the brick wall,trimmed it out,poured a threshold and now a car can drive right in.

I have electric heat, A/C, cable TV, small beer refrigerator, wireless internet and plenty of room to work on a car in the shop and store another in the front garage. Thanks for looking.
Tom

 

[ghnl]

Thanks for showing. Good looking shop, nice benches.

 

[Falthead]

Nice looking space! How did you make the table tops for the bench tops and tool stands?

 

[jeffharbert]

I like it. Very good use of the available space.

Where'd you snag that old Gulf sign?

 

[Tom'86M635CSi]

The work bench tops are made from a single 20'X42" peice of bowling lane salvaged from a local bowling alley that was torn down a few years ago. The wood is 2 3/4" thick old southern pine, tongue in groove and hand nailed. I cut it to size,trimmed it out with molding on the edge and stained the molding to match. The 9' table is the full 42" wide plus the molding.they are incredibly heavy.

 

[red92s]

What is the car on?

 

[Tom'86M635CSi]

visit ezcarlift.com

 

[vtx531]

I like the painted cabinets. How did you do it and what colors? What did they look like originally? Looks crowded by the door though.

 

[Tom'86M635CSi]

The Wurth drawer cabinets have their original finish. The other black & red cabinet is an old kitchen sink cabinet that was in the basement of the house when I bought it. It may have been the original from the house when it was built in the late 40's. It was painted with lavender interior house paint with floral print wall paper on the drawer & door faces when I found it. It's all steel with ball bearing rollers on the drawers. I stripped off the wall paper and sent it out for sand blasting. I them spray primed it with etching primer and brush painted the drawers with POR15 black then brush painted the cabinet with Rustoleum Safety red. I heated the steel as I painted to help the paint lay down to reduce the brush marks. The pics are a little decieving, it's not that tight by the side door and that door only leads out onto the deck on the back of the house. I enter the shop through the man door on the side of the front garage.

 

[e-tek]

Still haven't said where you scored the GULF sign!

The little compressor looks cool up there too - I thought it was a model of a real compressor!!!!

 

[Dan in Pasadena]

I LOVE those Wurth cabinets. I have the poor man's version of them - plastic boxes from Frye's. I assume there are four of them in your set? DId you buy the legs from Wurth too? Do you have a link where I could get them?

EDIT: TOm, Went back and looked over your pix. Have you thought of adding doors to that overhead compressor cabinet and painting the whole thing in the black/red scheme?

Last, I am a huge fan of the old M6's. When I sold my 911 last year I had some project money to play with and both the 46 Chevy you see on my avatar but an M6 would have scratched my itch very nicely. Even better, I love the look of the old 3o csi.

 

[Tom'86M635CSi]

Thanks Dan! I made friends with a former Wurth rep that I met on the maternity floor of the hospital when my daughter was born. These were all still in the boxes in his garage a year later when he called me and said "I moved out of the house yesterday and these need to be gone today or they go in the trash tonight" I didn't know that my truck could move that fast. Yes, I do consider enclosing the compressor every time it fires up!

 

[Tom'86M635CSi]

The Gulf sign was found in S.E.Michigan by a friend of mine. It was complete with both lenses, the center lighted frame and the electric rotator. He has the lighted frame and the other lense mounted on his shop wall. I think he got sick of the other lense in his way and gave it to me. The compressor is a 30 gallon with the wheels and handle removed and is mounted on BMW 3 series manual transmission mounts for vibration dampening.

 

[Munich77]

Very nice garage and gorgeous 3 series. I love the Alpina wheels.

 

[E30bimmer]

Nice looking E30, you can see pics of mine here: http://www.garagejournal.com/forum/showthread.php?t=49412

How about some pics of the M635?

Also, what type of wall vac is that?

Oh, and if you ever feel the need to get rid of the BMW parts sign, I'm all over it...

 

[E30bimmer]

subscribed

 

[AndrewBigA]

very nice looking garage!

 

[weicm3]

nice setup. please post some pictures of your 635. I love E24 so much. actually, I've been looking for one for weekend fun car.

 

[Tom'86M635CSi]

I'm a little embarassed at how filthy the E30 is in those pics, winter came early this year and I never had a chance to properly clean her up for storage. There are a few more pics of the E30 on the first page of the test forum on this site under "pic size test"

I don't have too many pics of the M635CSi for some reason. It's an '86 Euro with under 36,000 documented miles and I'm the second owner. It was a Dinan prepared turbo dubbed "The "Annihilator" by Road and Track Magazine. The engine is removed in the pics is being rebuilt to normally aspirated specs and stroked to 3.9 liter. Ignore the white HRE 16" wheels, they are used for storage only. It has BMW/BBS style 5 18"X8" wheels for driving as well as E34 M5 Euro 3.8 Nurburgring brakes.

The vacuum is a Hoover GUV (Garage Utility Vac) It's OK for small jobs and car interiors and has a nice long hose but It doesn't replace a full sized shop vac.