My wife and I moved into a new house down the road. One of the prerequisites was definitely a garage to continue our hobbies of building and finishing/refinishing furniture! The house we settled on has a (very small but still technically) 2-car garage – ~ 18′ wide and 19′ deep with 10 ft ceilings.
I got to work right away researching a new mobile work bench setup. I really liked the all-in-one on wheels sort of approach and researched a bunch of different examples and tried to take all of the things I liked from all of them and combine them into one bench. Here were some of the examples I was working from:
The most important features I wanted to incorporate were:
- My miter saw depressed into the bench so that the table top was level with the working surface of the saw so that I didn’t have to put long pieces of lumber on blocks to hold it up
- A flat surface for table saw out-feed – I had done some research and decided on (what at the time was) the best entry level table saw – A Skil 3410 – relatively inexpensive but with lots of safety features (riving knife, an anti-kick back thingy, and a plastic blade guard that acts as a housing around the blade)
- A place for my router table to be built into the bench
- Mobile – so heavy duty casters
- Ability for expansion
I went about constructing the bench and decided to go full size – 8′ x 4′! I built the skeleton entirely out of 2 x 4’s and 1/2″ MDF for cost savings and ease.
After initial construction the table was able to accommodate the miter saw and table saw. I cut the miter saw section out of the 1/2″ MDF table surface with a single jig saw cut and saved the piece so that I could remove the miter saw and place the piece of MDF back for a smooth(er) outfeed table if needed. I cut out the shelf under the table saw to allow to dust to fall and not get stuck under the frame.
Under the table saw there is a long continuous open section that allows me to store long piece of lumber (up to 8′) lengthwise along the bench. Right under the miter saw (but above the 8′ lumber shoot) there is another long open section that runs perpendicular to the length of the bench. I use this to store wood scraps (up to 4′). These two storage spaces have proved very very useful.
The router table was proving harder to incorporate and I couldn’t decide where the best place for it was. I tackled that a little later and eventually got it worked out:
Around this time my wife also gifted me a tool chest which has been crucial! One of the best features of this chest is the power bar on the inside of the top shelf (you can see it plugged in behind the chest on the wall). This power bar makes plugging in battery chargers and a music device super easy. Love it.
Next, I built a really quick and dirty cabinet in the corner near the door. I put it really high on the wall because I wanted to really take as much advantage of the height of the space as I could without limiting my options on the ground. Plus this corner of the garage was also pre-plumbed for a sink so this cabinet needed to be high enough above that so as not to get in the way.
Now it was time to start putting this garage to proper use!