I’m always interested to see other peoples shops and how they organize (or don’t) their stuff.
I’m slowly making space to get a workshop setup in my garage while remodeling, so I’ve done a few things so far. I work for a commercial millwork company by day, so I’m constantly hoarding pieces of falloff and random stuff from work to use at home.
I recently snagged 2 of these oversized shipping tubes and was able to repurpose them to store and organize my pieces of falloff.
I also was able to snag these cabinets that were going to get trashed since we replaced them for someone. Still working on how I want to use them and organize my tools and stuff in them. Mostly just putting my paint and drywall supplies so far while I ponder. Pretty awesome for free though.
I have several benches, rolling cabinets, stands a desk etc. in my 2 shops that take up quite a bit of my basement and garage. Over the years I’ve strengthened/stiffened and re-purposed some old rolling computer and TV carts for holding:
A grinder and related accessories
A belt/ disk sanding station and accessories
A small jointer/planer
A dovetail jig
A power mortise
A Kreg pocket hole station
I’ve also cobbled together (mostly from scrap wood and hardware some racks to hang tools on walls and overhead.
I posted a picture of the rack I use for holding my combination squares - its posted under the “inside measurement tool thread”
I’ll also share a couple of more pictures of overhead racks I made for clamps and pliers:
I made a giant lazy Susan that I adapted from something I saw in a book. I keep all of my bench top tools on it including a scroll saw, drill press, belt/disk sander, and mortiser. I put the turn table in the corner. One of my benches is 3’ deep and the other is 2’ deep. This makes the back corner hard to reach.
I made it ut of 3/4 MDF, cutting off the corners to let it spin freely. I put a 3/4" pipe in the middle attached to a flange on the bench which acts as an “axel”. It spins on 5 or 6 1" ball bearings.
The picture is an old picture not showing the mortiser.
Wow I’m blown away already. @fred that overhead storage is awesome. Never would have thought of that. @William the lazy Susan is a great use if a corner. Very cool.
I’ve seen a variation on this theme where the benchtop tools are mounted on pivots/hinges so they can be stored below the bench and swing up for use. They sell commercially made fixtures like this to stow-away a Kitchen Aid mixer in a cabinet and then lift it into place for use:
The rolling carts I’ve used came for just about $0 - leftovers from my kids and room-mates when my kids were going to college. There ere made out of flake board - so they needed a bit of scrap wood screwed in place to beef up the corners and keep them from racking - but the casters - while by no means heavy-duty still work OK and can be chocked to keep the cart stationary.
Depending on how tall you are you can store stuff on your ceiling. I have all of my trigger quick-clamps clamped to the bottom of ceiling joists. I also made this drop down cabinet the swings up into the joist bay. (Sorry for the bad picture) I use it to store shop vac hose and attachments. In addition I drilled through some of the joists and ran a 3/4" pvc pipe through them. I hang my c-clamps and smaller f-style clamps on the rod. I took some plywood and cut a hook into it and clamped my spring clamps to the board. I can hang that on my pipe as well. That way I can take the whole hanger down if I need a lot of spring clamps for a project.
Cubies for small power tools. This is actually hung from French cleat as with most of my wall mounted stuff. Note this is an old picture and many tools are elsewhere now.
Another of my designs for specific problem, it was so cold in my shop (less than freezing point) for much of the winter that my battery chargers wouldn’t work. So I built this heated/insulated cabinet for chargers, batteries and glue as well as a place for drills and other tools to hang out. https://youtu.be/qYLr94WyZf4
@Mr_Creek did you put something over your garage door glass to frost them? I have the same type of garage doors and I need to do something about them soon.
@Jacob_Edmond maybe a pic from this angle will help explain. With the inner garage door open. Sometimes God gives with both hands, I was blessed with a 1500 sqft. Garage on my first home purchase. The inner garage door already had frost on the windows when I moved in. By the looks it’s just white spray paint.(see post #9 in this thread)
I live in a studio flat so my “workshop” is one small area, and I want it to look nice.
I have a Pelican-style case with wide elastic straps added to hold tools in place when the case is opened. This is for most of the tools, and a few big tools on shelves above that.
I got messages saying can only post one image at a time because i’m a new user, and wait 14 seconds between each one, otherwise it wouldn’t let me post. Strange.
