World War I started. I thought about memorializing this by building a bunch of little padded cubes that velcro together into a much larger cube that we would use as an ottoman for a few years then break apart into smaller individual pieces and use. but in the end I decided that the larger piece would be unwieldy, and the smaller pieces would probably just cause us a bunch of trouble.

The new shop

I am finally working on the garage/shop in though, and it has been a bit frustrating. Part of the problem is that it is a two bay double garage, and the bays are off set from one another. The garage seems to be the bare minimum required to actually install garage doors. There is only 7 inches from the either side of the doors to the wall. This doesn’t really leave all that much room to open your car door. To add to the difficulty, the two bays are of differing lengths. One being 19 feet long, the other only 17 feet. Now, the Grand Caravan is too long for the 17 foot bay. Unfortunately this is the bay that is mostly a straight shot to pull into. The 19 foot bay could potentially hold the van (assuming the garage was completely empty) but there isn’t enough turning radius in the galactic wheelbase to get from the ally to the 2nd bay. I’m not entirely sure I could do it in the Mazda3 either. At least not easily. a Fiat 500 or a Smart car could probably do it. and then we could get two in, one behind the other.

I had wanted to make it so that the garage could be arranged so that we could get the cars in, much like I had in Anchorage. Since that is just not going to happen, I’ve decided on completely taking over the longer Non Battleship friendly side and making a permanent shop area. By this I mean the table saw will not be moving around the floor, and the counter and lower cabinets will be the same height as the table saw so that they can be used as an outfeed. The majority of the 19 feet of wall space will be covered in in bottom cabinets, wall cabinets. and lumber storage. The smaller bay will become an assembly & finishing area. The floor items from this side will be able to be moved over to the shop side when a vehicle is needed to be pulled in for repairs. The van still won’t fit, but working in the garage with the door open is still better than outside in the potential rain and on the gravel.

So last weekend we went out and picked up 10 sheets of particle board and I began to set up.

From here I’m standing at the garage door for the longer bay.

 

This is the smaller bay.I have everything sort of piled up so that I can have room to work on the cabinets.

Here I have the saw about as close as it can get. There is only a foot at the end of the outfeed sheet. I will have to open the garage door to have enough room to cut the other sheets. I’m just glad it doesn’t get all that cold here.

For comparison, here’s a shot of the shop in Anchorage shortly before we moved.

Adjusting to the smaller space is going to take a while, but I think being able to actually plan everything out this time will help a great deal. Once I get the shop done, I can work on some better storage and shelves inside, giving me a little bit more room in the garage in the storage alcove.

In the end, it should look similar to this:

Not that everything is in there, but the cabinets are in. :-)