Friday, September 4, 2009

New Workshop

Well, this summer was pretty hectic. The closest I got to doing any woodworking was to build a new workshop up at our cottage. I converted the second floor above our garage into a shop. Previously we had been using it as a bunkie for the kids to hang out and sleep in, and it hadn't been used too much in the past few years, so we decided we'd get a lot more use out of it as a shop. It was a lot of work to convert it. First we had to more or less demolish the interior, ripping out all the interior walls and the plumbing. The floor had been covered in carpeting, and the subfloor underneath was only 5/8" plywood. That wasn't strong enough to support all the heavy woodworking equipment, so we put in a new floor on top of the plywood. I was able to get some hardwood flooring pretty cheap from a local supplier, so I put 3/4" thick maple hardwood down. It made the floor really rigid, plus it looks nice and is really easy to sweep up and keep clean. The lighting was also pretty awful, so I installed new fluorescent lights using T-8 bulbs and electronic ballasts. The advantage of those is that they're more energy efficient that the old T-12 bulbs, and the electronic ballasts are totally quiet, you don't get the annoying hum that the old style lights emit. It's super bright in the shop now. I just moved all my machines and tools into the shop a couple of weeks ago, and I've been busy since then unpacking and setting up things. Unfortunately I've run out of time, school starts next week so things here in the new shop will have to wait till I'm back at the cottage next summer.
This is what the second floor of the garage looked like before I demolished the interior and changed it into a shop:
During demolition, there was quite a mess up there:

3 comments:

Nicholas Nelson said...

Wow.... your shop makes my space look like a joke. Ha can I use it while you're in Roberts creek?
How did you get that stuff up there?

Steve Neil said...

The shop is about 21 x 31, with a couple of window alcoves, so it come out to about 700 square feet. It's not a bad size. Two people could share the space pretty easily, especially considering that I have two benches in there.

I hired some movers to move all my tools to the new shop. Everything was in my basement in the city. So they had to move it up the stairs when they took it out of the basement (that was hard, the stairs were tricky), and then up the stairs into the new shop. It was easier getting into the new shop, they backed the truck up to the building and put a ramp from the truck halfway up the stairwell. They key thing for me, since I've got a bad back, was to hire a couple strong men and let them do all the lifting!

Tee said...

My childhood play area has been destroyed :( hahaha just kidding!
The shop looks great uncle steve! Glad the boys could help you lug some of those machines up there this summer too!
We cant wait to come back and visit!
Keep up the good work!
Love Tee