Dynames
Active member
It's the beginning of the year and I think it’s about time that I contribute rather than just lurk around in the forums. I will forewarn that this will be most likely lengthy and pictures will be sparse as I didn’t document everything as much as I would have liked. Hope that there’s a piece here or there that you find interesting or can incorporate. Alright, so here we go.
After saving, negotiating and having some extremely good luck, me and my wife purchased our first (and likely only) home in southern california a year and a half ago. A 3 bedroom , one and a half bath mid-century modern home that had a combination of wonderful original design (beautiful open beam ceilings!) , terrible original design (How did they cook in this kitchen...) and questionable "fixes" over the years. Work needing to be done to bring out the beauty that got covered over from literal decades of “upkeep”.
The garage ,on the other hand, was a blank slate.A two car garage ( 19’ x19.5’) with one light, one outlet and open stud walls. Compared to the storage closet that was housing my tools before, this was a giant step up (the realtors never understood why I was so adamant to see the garage).
My plan has been to make a prototype/manufacturing space. Not going to lie, the Tony Stark garage is pretty much my dream goal. So that means controlled environment, lighting, enough electricity to power everything, reliable internet, storage and work areas. Essentially an Electronics area, digital fabrication area, and a metal working/Fabrication area (woodworking to be done outside as much as possible.)
The house has priority for funds (We can’t live in the garage, well at least my wife doesn’t) so in the Time x Quality x Cost formula, Time is going to be the compensating factor for low costs and good quality.
One thing to keep in mind is that I’ve been saving up for this day. And when I mean saving up, That means in tooling and machines. Alot of tooling. The following picture is moving day when I emptied out previously mentioned storage closet that was roughly 3’ x 6’.
All this had to be stored in the garage while it was being worked on while being away from the walls. This problem got worse when my father went through his divorce and gave to me all of HIS tools and materials. I had also purchased an El Dorado CNC shortly after I had the house as the stars aligned so much I couldn’t pass it up.
Here’s how the garage was initially.
First priority was power. As I don’t do high voltage, I left this to the professionals. I got 120 amps pulled to the garage into a new box. Sadly, single phase was the best option for me so that ruled out some heavy machinery (though possible with a VFD conversion down the road). With the box in place, it was time for the wiring. Mapping out what tools I was going use, in roughly what area , resulted in 6 lines needing to be routed through the walls (Lights, Printer Farm, Electronics Bench, CNC, Misc Machinery area and the back wall which is earmarked as storage but in case I change my mind in the future) mostly being either 10 or 15 amp lines.
What little shelving I had courtesy of the previous owners got broken down and everything was shifted to the center of the garage.
After saving, negotiating and having some extremely good luck, me and my wife purchased our first (and likely only) home in southern california a year and a half ago. A 3 bedroom , one and a half bath mid-century modern home that had a combination of wonderful original design (beautiful open beam ceilings!) , terrible original design (How did they cook in this kitchen...) and questionable "fixes" over the years. Work needing to be done to bring out the beauty that got covered over from literal decades of “upkeep”.
The garage ,on the other hand, was a blank slate.A two car garage ( 19’ x19.5’) with one light, one outlet and open stud walls. Compared to the storage closet that was housing my tools before, this was a giant step up (the realtors never understood why I was so adamant to see the garage).
My plan has been to make a prototype/manufacturing space. Not going to lie, the Tony Stark garage is pretty much my dream goal. So that means controlled environment, lighting, enough electricity to power everything, reliable internet, storage and work areas. Essentially an Electronics area, digital fabrication area, and a metal working/Fabrication area (woodworking to be done outside as much as possible.)
The house has priority for funds (We can’t live in the garage, well at least my wife doesn’t) so in the Time x Quality x Cost formula, Time is going to be the compensating factor for low costs and good quality.
One thing to keep in mind is that I’ve been saving up for this day. And when I mean saving up, That means in tooling and machines. Alot of tooling. The following picture is moving day when I emptied out previously mentioned storage closet that was roughly 3’ x 6’.
All this had to be stored in the garage while it was being worked on while being away from the walls. This problem got worse when my father went through his divorce and gave to me all of HIS tools and materials. I had also purchased an El Dorado CNC shortly after I had the house as the stars aligned so much I couldn’t pass it up.
Here’s how the garage was initially.
First priority was power. As I don’t do high voltage, I left this to the professionals. I got 120 amps pulled to the garage into a new box. Sadly, single phase was the best option for me so that ruled out some heavy machinery (though possible with a VFD conversion down the road). With the box in place, it was time for the wiring. Mapping out what tools I was going use, in roughly what area , resulted in 6 lines needing to be routed through the walls (Lights, Printer Farm, Electronics Bench, CNC, Misc Machinery area and the back wall which is earmarked as storage but in case I change my mind in the future) mostly being either 10 or 15 amp lines.
What little shelving I had courtesy of the previous owners got broken down and everything was shifted to the center of the garage.
