This thing used to be a mess. It's an 84-year-old garage that was wasting away as storage for dozens and dozens of boxes of junk from three successive moves. I went at it in a single of week of hard lifting (and carrying, to a big rented dumpster) and my rule was that I could build new storage with whatever wood and shelving was already sitting inside the place. So the bench is an old hardwood door and a lot of the cabinetry is made of sheets of particle board or other scrap.
I tiled it on the cheap with Home Depot tiles. I let my wife pick out the colors for the paint. I told her I wanted it to look like my memories of working with my father in his shop back in Chicago.
I put the car on one side, so I could have room to work on the other. I wanted a table in front that I could draw on -- it sits either level or up like a drafting table.
The air compressor is in the crawlspace under the house, in an insulated box so no one can hear it.
There was an old sink that was kind of clumsily plumbed in. I added a counter top around it.
I made two fold-down benches that normally stow away against the wall.
One is for wood working.
The other one for welding:
To hold all the stuff that would have still cluttered the place up, I also built some storage in the driveway.
No sofas, no plasma TV, no bar -- just a place where I can get stuff done.
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