Home Workshop Project
Like any good project things evolve over time, as you will see in this post my workshop is one of those projects.
It started in 2011 when I bought my house in part because it had a 12x7m garage out the back with a 2 car garage in the front and a pergola inbetween. I got to work designing a tyre rack, mezzanine and mess room that lined the southern and eastern walls. I used 50x50x1.6mm galvinised tubing and although its a mess to weld it saves having to paint absolutely everything. I just sprayed the welds with Cold Gal once complete.
The roof of the mezzannine is covered in 18mm MDF while the walls use 12mm. This gives me a nice strong surface for storage, the mess room benefits from the sound reduction that MDF gives which helps me work late into the night.
As time has gone on plenty has changed, but these motorcycle stands have been the best addition.
They allow me to roll the bikes around the workshop, store the spare parts on the shelf beneath all whilst keeping a small footprint on the floor.
You can now build your own motorcycle bench by downloading the plans here and following along with me in this video.
I made a couple of framed acrylic covered powster boards that lined the southern wall underneath the small Mezzannine.
I installed a Max Jax hoist that was a low ris compact hoist with an external power pack that simply plugged into 240V wall socket. This allowed me to drill the hoist into the floor at a distance that I wanted, this meant that I could get a car into the adjoining bay and maximise the space I had. My partnership with Sidchrome really paid off when they sent me this incredible custom tool box with the Hilux proudly displayed.
It did’t take long for things to get a little chaotic in here.
I drilled another set of anchors into the floor for the hoist so I could have three positions in the floor, this allowed me to make these car stands to theoretically house 6 cars in the garage should I want to.
By watching these videos you can get a very good idea of how to make your own.
2018 rolled around and I went full time after spending 18 years working at Ford. I needed to equip myself with the tools that I used to operate as I couldn’t operate on the same level without them.
I made up roller bases from 50x50x3mm Galvinised square tube and put 100mm caster wheels on them. This meant the lathe, folder and guillotine could be shifted easily.
The garage stayed like this for about a month when I moved my operations to Manufutures for the next three years.
Then Covid happened and I ended my lease at Manufutures to return back home. This sparked a massive cleanup and subsequently created a very stressfull month with my entire driveway filled with stuff I had no room for. I took the oportunity to epoxy the floor.
Was it worth the effort….. of course.
My new space was well set out, I managed to fit everthing in that I needed and I had a great workspace to build and fabricate.
Let me show you round the place.
It’s a great home workshop and I have now been developing it for 15 years, will it change into the future? I don’t think so but I am sure it’s going to see a hell of a lot more projects come to life in here.
Above is a list of tools you will find in the workshop, remember to head to our Downloads section to build your own JIG bench and motorcycle tables.
Thanks for reading/ watching.