I have a standard 2-car garage:
- approximately 20' x 20'
- garage door is 7' high (about 6'9" clearance)
- garage height is split (front 8'4": ~ 8'8" high, back 11'6": ~ 9'10" high)
The problem with the current layout is that there's almost no storage and little to no surface area to work on. Underneath the workbench is a lawn mower and shop-vac. The shelves run from floor-to-ceiling and are packed with toolboxes and junk. There are shelves on the back wall above the workbench (pegboard with tools) & garden cart/mitre table (2x4 hangers holding shovels/brooms/rakes/etc )that are completely full. The workbench spends most of its time essentially as a 'catch-all' surface, covered with stuff. There's no room to work on anything.
- There's no room for a table saw. I've (regretfully) come to terms with the fact that I can't have a table saw without moving (and wife will kill me and dump me in a ditch before that happens). Given some table space, a good circular saw (I have) and some creative jigs, I can manage without one (but I need still need to find the work surface area).
- As it stands right now, I don't have a good work surface - and there's no room to build a decent workbench. The area underneath) the current "workbench" is necessary for storing the `shop-vac`_ and `lawn mower`_. The workbench I have isnot* a flat surface (I replaced the highly damaged top ~ a year ago with some MDF, which has warped slightly over the past year), there's no clamping points/vices/dogs, but even if there was - I wouldn't ever use it because it basically just functions as a catch-all and is constantly covered with junk.
- There's no room for a drill press, router table, etc without making some major adjustments.
- The Jeep is slightly longer than my wife's Forester - but essentialy for both cars - in order to park them (and have room to walk behind them with door closed), there's ~ 2' of space to work with in front (the current depth of the workbench, shelves, etc). Once the stinger bar goes on the jeep, I'll need slightly more space available in front of the jeep to park it in the garage.
- On the sides of the garage, there are essentially 4" concrete risers (about 3'3/4" deep). This reduces the floor space about 9" total on the east and west sides.
- Towards the front (the house, opposite the garage door) there is a pressure-treated 4x4 secured to the concrete running the width of the garage.
- I have surplass lumber laying on the floor (getting ruined) on the far side of the jeep (there is no good location to store the lumber).
- The far wall has a track system that's holding bikes, tools, etc.
- The front wall (between the shelf and the east wall) has some 2x4's I'm using with pegs to hang all the shovels, brooms, gardening & lawn equipment.
I'd really like to make some major adjustments to give myself the space I need to have a legit workshop - so I can actually do some real woodworking, rather than daily cobjobs or buying cheap chinese plywood furniture because I don't have the necessary space/organization to tackle more difficult projects.
Dimensions of the various junk that takes up space:
| Object | Length | Width | Height |
|---|---|---|---|
| Garage | 20' | 20'0" | 8'8" - 9'10" |
| Jeep | 15'4" | 6'5" | 6'1" |
| Forester | 15' | 5'10" | 5'6" |
| Mitre Table | 21.65" | 33.46 | 29.7" |
| Lawn Mower | 37" | 20" | 25" |
| Garden Cart | 20.5" | 8.8" | 37" |
| Shop-Vac | 18.2" | 22.8" | 18.2" |
- Build a 'lean-to' style shed on the exterior of the far (east) wall. Move lawn mower, wheel-barrow, shovels, brooms, gardening equipment, gas cans, etc there, to free up garage space.
- Build an attached extension on the far (east) wall and knock down the current wall, adding ~4 more feet of interior space.
- Build a lumber rack on the far (east) wall.
- 2 vertical spaces = 1ft (1 space = 6")
- 5 horizontal spaces = 1ft (1 space = 2.4")
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- 1' ┃ ┃┃ Wheel- ┃┃ Mitre ┃┃ SHELVES ┃┃ WORKBENCH ┃┣━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┫
┃ ┃┃ Barrow ┃┃ Table ┃┃ ┃┃ ┃┗━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━┫
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