Gear: Upgrading the Shop, Il Grotto di Volpe! (Fox Cave!)

With the move back to the States from Italy, we were looking forward to moving back into our house.  Granted, we knew there would be some work associated with cleaning up after the renters, but we also knew that our "fresh start" would also provide an opporunity to work on some things around the house that we never had the opportunity to improve when we were actually living there.  For example, we had talked for years about refinishing the hard wood floors, however this is a daunting task when you actually occupy your house.  What are you going to do, move everything to one side of the house, sand and stain the floors, move everything to the refinished side, and repeat?  Sounded messy and like a lot of work, so as you can expect, it never materialized.  Well, with all of our stuff still in transit and the house empty (sans tenants), we took the grand opportunity to refinish all the floors.  Still quite a mess, however it's a lot easier cleaning up just a few ceiling fans and window sills compared to EVERY ITEM in the house!

So, with this wonderful opportunity to improve some stuff in the house, we decided to also have the basement repainted.  The basement is of the stone variety, without the smooth, dry walls of a poored concrete basement.  Over time mold and mildew had formed on the stone walls, so it was really in need of some Dry Lock paint.  Dry Lock is a special paint that seals up concrete and masonry walls, preventing moisture from seeping in, and also gives a nice clean appearance, as it's a new paint job!  So, with the basement getting a new coat of paint on all the walls and on the floor, I had to gut the workshop...which provided not only an opportunity to get a coat of paint on the walls, but also to rearrange and reorganize how the workshop is layed out.  My workshop was going to get a makeover!

The workshop: Before (Nasty Walls!)

The obvious first step was clearing out all the old cabinets, workbenches, and other items that had collected in the basement.  I was really surprised at the amount of storage I had in the basement, most of which was old kitchen cabinets.  I tore everything out and moved them out to the garage.  With the basement completely empty, the work crew that was also rehabbing our bathroom got to work cleaning and painting the floors and walls of the basement.

Workshop: Before (Too many cabinets!)

Once they were done, the basement looked like new!  Amazing what a new coat of white paint on a wall will do!  The floors were all a nice light gray.  With a nice blank canvas, I started by bringing the workbench and the best couple cabinets back into the shop.  One of the primary issues I was having with the previous version of the shop wasn't just the poor quality of cabinets, but also the amount of cabinets.  I had too much storage space, and too much counter space, to the extent that I was probably storing things that were better off thrown away.  And many of my larger power tools were difficult to get in the cabinets that weren't designed to hold large, heavy electrical tools.  With all that in mind, I decided that less was more.  I only brought down one cabinet to be permenantly installed in the shop, another cabinet to be mounted on casters as a sort of mobile work stand, and plans for improving the workbench to improve it's storage capacity.

The work bench had been just a thick piece of wood mounted on a sturdy steel frame, with under bench storage consisting of setting stuff on the floor or on the one rickety shelf (that consisted of a couple old boards).  While searching for ideas online (gotta love Google's Image Search!), I found some plans on a woodworking sight for sprucing up a work bench.  What immediately caught my eye was the large drawers mounted beneath the work surface, and the large caster mounted boxes designed to roll on the floor and act as heavy duty drawers to store power tools.

Here's the inspirational photo, from: 

http://www.familyhandyman.com/DIY-Projects/Woodworking/Workbenches/diy-workbench-upgrades/Step-By-Step
So, with an improved workbench in mind, I installed fewer cabinets to make my workshop better.  Almost immediately I noticed that the increased space allowed me to more easily work on projects.  And one of the first projects was improving the workbench.  I cut plywood for the drawers, making them as wide and as long as possible, to maximize storage space for items I'd use a lot, like drill bits, screws and other small hardware.  I kept them fairly shallow, so that they'd remain well organized and not turn into junk drawers.  As for the caster mounted "drawers" that were to roll on the floor, I made them deep enough to allow tool cases to fit securely in them, and long and wide enough to maximize the space under the workbench.  Overall, the four drawers effectively store most of my tools and their accessories.

The improved bench with large drawers mounted below the work surface and two caster mounted boxes (drawers) that roll on the floor and are great for storing large, heavy power tools.  

Closeup of the caster-mounted drawer.

With the workbench project complete, I moved some track lighting above the corner where I planned on setting up the bike rack, ensuring enough light while working on the bikes.  I mounted the one cabinet to the left of the bench, and another smaller cabinet above it, for holding small items and stuff I wanted to keep out of the kids reach, like paints and spray lubricants.  I painted some peg board black, figuring it would offset nice with the new white walls, and also highlight the tools on the board well.

Before

After

On the far side of the shop I installed a double-decker bike rack to hold two bikes, and next to that I installed a wood shelf system from IKEA.  This area had previously held one cabinet that was used to store painting supplies.  The corner wasn't necessarily a mess, but the corner wasn't really "used" in the sense that the stuff stored there was rarely used.  It was kind of a "permanent paint storage" after the wife and I painted.  Storing the paint in the garage freed up the space, ensuring that the new shelves and the bike rack would allow easy access to tools and supplies that were used more often.  My wife described this corner's improvement as looking "less scary".

The "scary" corner, before...

...and After: now with the double-decker bike rack and ample storage thanks to a shelf system from IKEA.

Kitty Corner from the bike repair stand, I cleaned out the area around the work sink, which had previously held floor and wall mounted cabinets to the left of the sink and to the right of the sink a table that held a miter saw.  The previous configuration provided too much storage space, and took up too much of the room.  The saw produced a lot of dust in the basement, so after the basement was painted, I decided to not replace any of the cabinets permanently along this wall, and to keep the miter saw in the garage.  To provide some storage and a more flexible workspace, I built a mobile workstand out of two of the smaller cabinets.  I took two cabinets, one base cabinet and one drawer base cabinet, screwed them together, flipped them upside down and mounted 3/4" plywood base on the bottom.  On the base I mounted four brake equipped casters.  I flipped the now mobile cabinets back over, upright, and screwed 3/4" plywood on the top for a workspace.

I built a duplicate to remain in the garage, which is separated from the house, to hold the miter saw that will spend most of its time out there.  To provide some flexibility with where the miter saw operates, I mounted it on plywood, and drilled a hole in each of the four corners.  I used these holes as guides, drilling matching holes in both of the mobile workbenches, one in the garage and one in the basement shop.  I removed the plywood mounted miter saw, set it on it's side, and glued dowels into the holes, with the dowels facing down, like spikes.  These "spikes" or dowels fit into the mobile workbench and ensure a secure and consistent fit.  

So, eliminating the excess cabinets proved more space for working, and an opportunity to build a more flexible storage and working platform.

Standing by the bike repair stand, looking back: more peg board to hold paint brushes and helmets, work sink, and caster mounted work bench.

I had recently upgraded to a new laptop.  Faster, more storage, all that...  But the old laptop still worked fine, so I thought I might re-purpose it for use in the shop.  Why, you might ask?  Well, for a couple shop specific "tasks".  First, music.  The hard drive on this laptop can hold more than enough music, and with the growing number of songs on YouTube, a WiFi enabled laptop could allow me to enjoy "music videos" while I'm working.  My playlists on YouTube are free, and there's nearly endless variety.   Not to mention Pandora, or many other web based music services.

The second important aspect of making a laptop computer an integral part of the shop is the tremendous number of "How-To"s available on the internet.  From PDFs that explain the intricate details of a suspension fork, to YouTube videos that go step-by-step through the complicated process of bleeding air bubbles from your hydraulic brakes, the notion of having a "shop computer" is priceless.  I had been bringing my nicer laptop into the shop while working on various projects, but I was always worried about getting it dirty or worse broken.  Well, I wanted to repurpose this old laptop so that I wouldn't have to worry about either of those issues.

I thought about building a slide out drawer like device to house the laptop, and while it would have been awesome to have that "disappear" under the work bench, it posed a number of issues.  The laptop would be more permanently affixed to the drawer, reducing the flexibility of having a more portable laptop in the shop.  Which leads to the next issue: where would I mount the drawer mounted laptop?  I would want it accessible so that I could view diagrams while working on the bike, or any other work surface.  As I thought about the practical issues of using a computer in the workshop, I decided on a more mobile solution, and one that would be easier to construct, too.

I built an angled mount for the computer.  It puts the laptop at a 25-30 degree angle, making it easier to type while working, and also shortening the depth of the computer, too, which ensures it takes up less of a footprint on the workbench.  I drilled some holes in the plywood surface that is the mount, to ensure that the computer gets some airflow.  Next, I painted the laptop mount.  Finally, I mounted the laptop's old power cord adapter underneath along with a set of USB speakers.  The entire unit now sits on the workbench, right next to the toolbox, which says a lot about how the rapid access to information improves the ability to fix and maintain just about anything.

The new and improved shop looks cleaner, has better lighting, but features less storage space than its predecessor, which I believe is a better space for actually working on projects.

Completed Shop: improved workbench, laptop computer mount, track lighting above the bike repair stand, with the Fox symbol as the finishing touch!