Basement Workshop — Done for Now
The workshop remodel is done enough to do other stuff with the basement besides work on the basement. I’m really happy with how it came out, the new shop layout has much more space and is better organized.
In the photo above you can see the two main workbenches. The one on the left is more wood oriented while the one on the right is more metal/brazing/bicycle oriented. It’s nice having these close together, in the old layout they were in different corners of the basement and so tools were never put away properly.
I went back and forth on building vs buying workbenches and ended up mostly buying to save time. The bike workbench is 8′ long, maple top, and has sturdy legs. I liked it because it is high enough to put rolling tool cabinets underneath it. I bought the last two 4′ power strips at Home Depot and used those to get 20 outlets along the back of the workbench. Probably overkill, but they’ll come in handy.
My old bike workbench had small bins for random parts along the back and I found them useful. This time I left more space for them. I’m still experimenting with the spacing and bin size.
The wood workbench has a commercial top with a couple of vises. This photo makes me laugh because you can see my old bike workbench on the right, it is tiny (and cluttered, as always) in comparison. I built that a few years ago as a potting bench for Christine, but it ended up becoming my main workbench even though it is too small and not really sturdy enough.
Bike storage is similar to the old basement, 6 bike hooks set at 14″ intervals alternating up/down. It looks a little messy in this photo because my trailer is jammed in there (I haven’t found a good location for it yet).
I bought a small lathe (7×8 inch, soon to be 7×14 inch) on Craigslist and set it up on this workbench. I’ve only started playing with it today and so far I’ve only made a little gear holder to hold some of the threading gears. I’m enjoying playing with this and think it’ll be useful. My first bike projects will be some taillight housing and a copy of the Hub-Bub Rohloff Shift Adapter. If I get really fancy I’d like to build a cable travel adapter to make a 9sp Shimano bar-end shifter shift a 9sp SRAM internal hub gear.
There is tire and wheel storage under the stairs. I need to clean up the random pile of stuff sitting on top of that, eventually the trailer will probably live there.
Brewing equipment is behind the wood workbench and is much better organized. It used to be scattered in bins around the basement,now it is all on these two sets of shelves.
There is still more to do,but it can happen slowly instead of all being done today. I’m still organizing and figuring out what should live where. I need a place to store metal (right now it is on the floor under the lathe) and need to build a door into the crawlspace. The back wall (which has the wood storage and connects to the crawl space) is a bit of a dumping ground.
Overall it probably doesn’t look like much, but I think it is a big improvement over the old space. You can see photos of that taken two years ago.
Thanks to Christine, Rory, and Kathy for their help on different parts of the project and to Jimmy for his idea of combining the storage and laundry rooms. This layout seems to have maximized the available space.
Very nice. Where”d you get the workbenches from? A while ago ReStore had some old bowling alley lanes that I thought about turning into a workbench, but never did it for space and cost issues.
Let me know if you starte getting serious about the indexed shifter/internal hub adapter. I started to make a jig so I could measure cable pull for each shift of an STI shifter, but it wasn”t really accurate enough, plus I never bought a hub, so I abandoned the project.
The big workbench is a Gladiator Garageworks one. It is large and sturdy, but was expensive and the top is nicer than I need in a basement. My vise still isn”t attached because I haven”t wanted to drill the top yet.
The two smaller workbenches (lathe and woodworking one) use Roussau legs. These are sold at Woodcraft (down in Georgetown) and you can pick the width and depth and the legs are height adjustable. The top on the woodworking one is a european one that I bought a few years ago on Craigslist (they are sold new through Rockler and Woodcraft). Those legs are great, you they are sturdy and really easy to adapt to your needs. I could probably make my own from angle iron, but these are well thought out.
I do want the figure out the shift adapter. I”m waiting for the SRAM 9sp hubs to come in and will do it.
What a stellar project. I am deeply inspired now to start hacking away at my garage to make my own shop better. a work bench would be nice…
Congratulations! I remember what your basement looked like last August and I am impressed at the change. I”ll bet you”re a lot happier with the new layout! Cheers –Beth
Thanks Beth. It’’s been great, yesterday I had four people working on projects down there and it was comfortable for all. In my old space there was hardly room for me!
Where are pics of the new laundry room? My hubby seems inspired, not sure if this is a good thing yet =)