Our Shop
In the beginning . . .
My shop is starting out at only 9 1/2 feet by 20 feet. It is a small space, but I do have a little more room to spread out in the basement if I need to. Right now, it's a beginning.
The first picture is of my current shop space, empty except for a few pieces of stock and the dehumidifier. A basement shop with tools with cast iron tables has to have a dehumidfier. The door at the end leads to a small room. I would like to take the wall out at that end of the room to open up the whole space, but I rent and I'm not sure the landlord will let me do that. If not, I can work around it. This space is not ideal for a workshop. Do you see any electrical outlets in the room? Well, so far you can see the one that the dehumidfier is plugged into, and that is the only one in this view. Not a good sign.
The dehumidfier hose goes through the wall and runs to the floor drain. The wood on the extreme right is actually the door into the laundry room and I am standing at the bottom of the basement stairs. Also note the single double-tube flourescent light in the ceiling. It's the only light in the whole room. If you look closely you can see a rectangle of something on the right wall. It's the access panel for replacing the furnace filter, so that limits what I can put against that wall, certainly nothing that is not moveable. At least the concrete floor is smooth!
This is looking back to where I took the first picture. See the other outlet in the room? Yep, one more in the corner, and that makes a grand total of two outlets for the entire shop. That sucks big time. I'll have to do some juggling to keep from blowing fuses all the time. I have a heavy-duty extension cord I am running from the laundry room, so that helps. Oh well, you do what you have to do. You can see the dropped ceiling is dropping a little too much. Whoever worked on this house lacked skillz.
Backing up into the doorway to the little room at the end of the basement you can get a good view of the whole space. There is a strip of wall board missing near the floor at the bottom right, also by the dehumidifier, where it got damaged by water. Water hasn't been a problem since I cleaned out the gutters. Amazing what a little home maintenance will prevent. You'll also note that there are no windows to be seen, and indeed, every window in the basement is covered over by wall board. I would like to smack the idiots who worked on this house.
And that is my shop so far. I actually have the tools hidden in the other rooms for these shots. I moved them back in when I was done taking pictures, but I don't have anything placed where I think it will stay. That's still an ongoing process. I also need to come up with a way to store my hand tools, other than a cardboard box. I'm working on it, I'm working on it . . .