The Innov8tive Garage Upgrade

[Innov8tive1]

We have been living in our current house for just over 4 years. The place came with a 24'x36' garage with 10' ceilings, fully insulated, wired and heated. It was great considering I hadn't have a full sized shop at my last two houses but there are of course always things we would like to change. I did a few things to get me by but now it's time to take some more major steps. Whomever drywalled the place didn't leave any gap between the drywall and the floor so of course the drywall wicked up a lot of moisture from where it touches the cement floor and from when I have vehicles in there in the winter and snow melts off etc. So that will have to be corrected in areas where the water pools.
I removed the old oil furnace in favor of a natural gas unit heater which is much cheaper to run and takes up no floor space as it hangs from the ceiling.
Now that I have some time (between work, side jobs and helping raise my 5 month old daughter) I have decided to start on re-vamping one side of the garage to make it more useful. I do many different things in my shop from working on an old tractor, welding, metalwork to woodwork and electronics so I am planning on creating another work "area" to handle the dirty, messy, greasy things and clean up the current work area for electronics and wood working. Possibly trying to divide up the current work area into two smaller areas..........we'll see.
So here are the pictures I took today of the start of it all. I simply stood in each corner and took a picture.

 

[Innov8tive1]

So this shelving unit is coming out to make room for a new workbench, 12' long which will have a 4' extension (L shaped) in the corner (where there is now a metal cabinet) with a platform underneath to keep stored items off the floor. Above the work bench will be 3 or 4 shelves which will go all the way up to the ceiling to store items that are currently in the not to functional bin type shelving unit. This area will be used for working on mechanical/dirty things. I will make it the same height as my parts washer so when the lid is closed I will have extra room.

 

[Innov8tive1]

Here is the current work area.

 

[regguy1]

You've got alot of space there, what kind of heater is that? Reznor?

I finished the inside of my 26' x 30' take the guided tour, click the video link below

 

[Innov8tive1]

Yes it's a Reznor 65KBTU heater. It works very well!

Nice job, your garage is very neat and tidy. And a lift too! That gives me some hope. I need a shed for a lot of the outdoor stuff that seems to land in the garage and as you can see from the pictures there is a lot of clutter right now. Too many hobbies I guess.

 

[regguy1]

Yes it's a Reznor 65KBTU heater. It works very well!

Nice job, your garage is very neat and tidy. And a lift too! That gives me some hope. I need a shed for a lot of the outdoor stuff that seems to land in the garage and as you can see from the pictures there is a lot of clutter right now. Too many hobbies I guess.

Thanks,

I built a 12' x 20' addition on the back of the garage, without it I couldn't keep the main area clutter free, I park the tractor in there and have lots of shelves. I have a Mr. Heater, I think your Reznor is a step up in quality.

 

[Innov8tive1]

An addition on the back of the garage is something I have considered, it would certainly save on construction costs. We do need something closer to the garden though. Still undecided.

I finally got an hour and a half to start this project this evening. I unloaded the shelves and removed the shelving unit. Then I removed the bottom 4' (plus another 3.5" so I can put a board at the bottom to keep the drywall well off the floor) of drywall and vapor barrier and there was quite a bit of mold/mildew. After the first piece I put on my respirator as I could feel a little tickle in my throat.

I have more pictures but I'm having trouble uploading them, I keep getting a "problem loading page" error from the site. Anyone else?

 

[Innov8tive1]

The pics from last night that I could not get to load.
The wall opened up and the bottom 4' of a sheet of drywall I removed. Pretty nasty! I will have to replace the bottom of most of the sheets on 3 of the walls.

 

[Innov8tive1]

I kind of forgot about this thread I started.......6 years ago!! Well some things have changed in the shop, nothing too sweeping that I can't cover it now.
I'm currently in the process of building a 8x12' room in the southeast corner of the shop which will be pretty much sealed off from the shop as best I can so that it can stay clean for working on intricate things, electronics etc. without having sawdust, grinder dust, paint overspray, grease and other forms of dirt from getting all over things I'm working on. I also plan to use it as a music room, for setting up equipment and maybe some recording etc. to keep it out of the house and keep the peace. Kind of an adult play room.
Anyway, didn't take pictures at the start until I got it framed etc. but here's what it looks like now.

 

[Innov8tive1]

So around the outside perimeter I plan to put lower cabinets to serve as a woodworking area, one of which will house the router lift I got for Christmas. Under the counter will be tool storage to replace a rolling cabinet I have now that takes up a lot of room. I also plan to put upper cabinets as space permits for additional storage. The goal being to eventually have everything with an enclosed place to be kept. The long bench the chop saw is sunken into was a high school science classroom teacher's desk. Plenty of different sized drawers there for storage of smaller items. The inside of the room will also have cabinets for storage, a couple of work bench areas, shelves to house my CD and LP collection (yes, I still have those!) and hopefully enough space to set up a nice little stereo for listening, away from the house and it's distractions.
I've wired in 22 receptacles..........perhaps excessive but I don't want to be searching for a power bar or extension cord for anything! I also have two coax feeds for satellite, ethernet cabling, audio wiring and phone. I want this to be a tidy workspace! The drywall will be delivered tomorrow so I can get that hung this weekend.

 

[Lee Celtic]

yeh right..!! a clean room...hahaha..

I've seen Breaking Bad....

I too have come back after a spell away from the workshop.. it's good to be back and working on it again.. looking forward to see what you get up to..

 

[Innov8tive1]

Well I've been working on it here and there but haven't been updating this thread. Recently got the bug to throw out a whole bunch of stuff that I haven't touched in the 10+ years we've been there and try to find a place for everything so that the garage can be more functional.
I built an 8x12' shed a few winters ago with open attic for even more storage. It's taking a lot of the things that were merely cluttering up the garage but still much to do. I'll get some pics of the other projects I've done.

Regards Breaking Bad, I'd end up with a large crater where the garage once stood!

 

[Innov8tive1]

Some of the updates made in the past few years include probably the last compressor I'll ever have to buy. 80gal, 2 stage, 7.5hp.........handles everything I've thrown at it with ease.

 

[Innov8tive1]

Ok, I've come to the conclusion that I'm not a good regular poster like some of you are...........it's months, even years between posts but I think I've made some decent progress so here's some pics.

 

[Innov8tive1]

And a list (probably incomplete) of some of the improvements.
Shelves in the south west corner which are partially supported by threaded rods from the attic. Workbench in south west corner, used mostly for dirty, greasy work on engines etc.
Approximately 280 gal of water storage in the north east corner which I fill with a diversion off the north side eaves trough. It is connected to a water pump and pressure tank and goes from there to a set of 2" filters to remove any sediment etc. then to the wash sink. Some of the original plumbing was missing so I rigged a washer solenoid to a switch which is activated by the original foot pedal. Used a shower head to distribute the water. I've also added a faucet below that to which I can connect a garden hose. The rain water is great for washing vehicles because it doesn't leave water spots like our well water does.
In the south east corner I constructed a 8x12' "clean room" in which I work on electronics and other things which I want to keep dust out of. It's not quite finished and a hell of a mess right now due to a recent shop clean up. On the outside of said room, I added some upper cabinets from Canadian Tire when they went on sale. So far I'm very happy with them and they're not quite full yet so that's something new for me!
The lower cabinet, which I've mentioned before was a teachers desk from a high school science classroom. The top was in poor shape but still structurally solid. That, combined with some cabinets from our basement (remodeled that last winter) made a great base for a woodworking area. I was going to use hardboard for the counter tops so it was easily replaceable but I decided on some inexpensive laminate flooring instead........looks nice but when it wears out I'm going with my original plan, hardboard with a few coats of varnish. This stuff won't hold up to moisture very well at all.......I don't plan on using it for messy stuff like glue ups but we'll see what happens. I've also sunk the compound miter saw into it but it needs to be adjusted since I put the new countertop on. Under the upper cabinets are some LED lights that I found on ebay. For the price, I'm pretty impressed with them.

What else..........the slatwall on the south wall was hung way too high so over the weekend I lowered it so as to make it all more usable. I also added screws to the slatwall hooks to keep the hooks in place and hopefully keep things organized a bit better.

 

[Innov8tive1]

Speaking of organization, been trying to get it so everything has a place to be put away and off the floor. That's been one of the themes I've seen in other shops on this site that I really admire. I'm still a long way from that and there is still much to do but my recent progress has just made me want to try that much harder.

 

[53PontiacSD]

Well, it looks like you've come a long way since 7 years ago. I too have the same problem with clutter. Glad you found a solution for yours. Keep up the good work.

Billy