Workshop!

So, I’ve been mucking about recently sorting out a workspace so I can finally (and hopefully effectively) make stuff, you know, like you did when you were a kid and you always wanted a place with tools and cool stuff in…

Was that just me then?  Anyway….

The garage down the bottom of the garden has spent the bulk of the time we’ve owned the house as a sort of rubbish tip, full of carpet and all the detritus that was built up when renovating the house, at one point it was up to head height and you could barely close the door, it’s been emptied twice and I finally got around to my plan of converting it into a two section workshop, one nice clean section for delicate/semi delicate stuff like electronics and the other as a rough area for heavy duty things like carpentry.

The garage overall is about 6m x 3m, so I concluded that I could basically split it in half lengthwise with the clean bit at the back.

Step 1 was clearing it all out, found an extremely useful workbench at the back that saw an awful lot of use in the construction stages, you can see that below as well as what classifies as it being ‘tidied’

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Step 2 was beginning construction, the plan was to build a studwork frame attached to the walls via existing bolts and L-Shaped brackets, anchoring it in place during the initial phases until the frame became structurally solid by itself.

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Damp proof membranes were added to attempt to limit any moisture ingress, also as time went on networking and power cabling was installed and foam insulation inserted in the wall spaces to try and keep the place warm in winter

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Step 3 was plasterboarding the whole place using standard 12.5mm wallboard, I also decided to do the ceiling as I had some left over.  18mm chipboard was used to create the flooring.

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Step 4 involved gardening, when I had my main fusebox redone in the house I allowed for an additional RCD of 36A so I could run out 6mm SWA cabling to provide decent power to the garage in case I got some heavy electrical requirements such as welding gear or a lathe.  I also ran 2 Cat5e cables out for internet connectivity which was placed in plastic ducting for protection, this was all buried in a deep trench.

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Step 5 is second finish stuff, I plastered/skimmed the walls, which was a first for me, which came out alright, lined the ceiling, painted the whole shebang and laid some laminate flooring I had left over from when we did something similar in the house, I also built a door frame and installed the door etc.

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Step 6 was building a wooden framework to support the planned worktops.  I ummed and ahhed about what worktop to go for but eventually decided to just use Ikea tabletops as they are comparitively cheap and there’s one just around the corner, I got 4 and had to trim a couple of ends to make it all fit.

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Step 7 was really finishing off, doing the networking, installing the switch/hub and wireless router (that makes 3 wireless networks in the house now…) a few bits of trim, installing blinds for the windows and rudimentary window frames (to cover my shoddy corner plastering..) then just moving things in!

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Step 8 will be final finish and organising the dirty area, as well as installing new electrics in there off the main ring and finding all my tools, of which I am sure I have 2 of everything as it was always a case of ‘ooh where’s my chisel, I can’t find it I’ll buy another one…’

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Step 9 will probably be getting my CNC router built, but that’s for another post (many probably) entirely…

 

 

Jason Gilbert Written by:

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