Building out my Garage Workshop

I can't believe I'm back doing this again so soon but today I'm going to start building out my new workshop space in this [Music] garage hey everyone welcome today I'm going to be sharing the process if I turn this garage into a super functional Workshop some of you might have watched a video I made a couple months ago where I set my workshop space up in a small garden shed I actually really likeed work out of that little garden shed despite the fact that it was on the small side but basically my husband got a job offer we couldn't say no to and we had to pack up and move to a new town move to a new apartment but the good news is this apartment comes with a pretty spacious garage that I'm standing in right now ultimately I think will be a better fit for the kinds of projects I want to do in the future and I'll have a lot more space to work in so the place is definitely a mess as you can see we just threw everything in here when we moved and didn't really organize it very well so before I get started with anything I'm definitely going to have to do a lot of cleanup and just general organization [Music] there was so much stuff to organize and get rid of and I spent a good half of the day just prepping the area as best I could our garage is separated from our apartment by a short walkway and the only wall we share is with our neighbor's garage before jumping into anything else I went to paint the wall on the right side a previous tenant had put insulation and drywall over the shared wall between our garage and our upstairs neighbor garage which was really nice because it would significantly help with sound insulation [Applause] I used the leftover paint from my first Workshop build an off-white color called fog the lighter color will help with reflecting light and would make the workshop feel brighter and more open oh man my arms feel like they're about to fall off right now from all that painting so I think I'm going to take a break for a bit and move on to another task which is throwing up some of the lumber and longer boards that I have up in the attic space that's the perfect way to keep some of that stuff off the floor and also store it horizontally so it won't warp with time [Music] [Music] what [Music] [Music] [Music] I also went ahead and assembled some of the big metal shelves that we need for our tool storage as well as camping supplies and other [Music] stuff I completely disassembled my workbench in the move so I needed to build a new one up from scratch the previous workbench had been built in a hurry and wasn't that sturdy so this time I looked up a basic but solid bench design from another YouTuber Johnny builds I'll link his video in my description if you want his step-by-step breakdown of how to make it I did adjust some of his measurements for my own personal preferences but the overall design is the same as his [Music] [Music] something people suggested a lot last time I set up my workshop was to put everything including my workbench on Wheels it just gives you a lot more flexibility when you can move things around depending on the project you're working [Music] on [Music] [Music] a [Music] [Music] the big sheet of plywood I had gotten to make the top of the workbench as well as the Shelf was a little shorter in width than it was supposed to be but I didn't want to spend money on a second sheet of plywood just to make up those 2 in so I decided I could live with the Shelf being not quite wide enough next up I wanted to partition off the little offshoot room that would be reserved for Kyle's side hustle stuff fixing up bikes I hung up a giant tarp to separate this space from the main area that would hopefully help keep a lot of the dust from getting into that space it isn't the prettiest solution but hey it's cheap and it [Music] works that little flickering single bulb just wasn't cutting it so I picked up some LED light bars to improve the lighting [Music] [Music] situation these lights were pretty easy to hang and I found three of them made a huge difference with the shop [Music] [Music] lighting so up until now I've been doing a lot of the work on this space after work I have a full-time job that takes up most of my time and usually the time I have to work on projects or setting up this Workshop is a couple hours after work but today I have the entire day to work on this space so I'm really hoping to get that French cleat system done that might be a little overly optimistic but we'll see this is my first time attempting to build a French cleat system typically people cut the cleats with a table saw but since I don't own one I set my circular saw blade at a 45° angle and used a straight edge plus lots of checking with a square ruler to make sure the cuts were consistently [Applause] straight [Music] [Music] the whole process went rather smoothly G to show you can do a lot with just a circular saw it just might take some patience also real quick I just have to share that my least favorite part of this entire build has been the amount of dead potato bugs and black widows that I found in this garage luckily I haven't seen any live ones yet only dead it's a fun fun little surprise every time I shift a piece of wood I used two 2tx 4ft pieces of MDF to create the backing for the French cleat system and mounted them to the studs in the [Music] wall then I started attaching the cleats making sure they were evenly spaced and secured really well with screws through the MDF and into the [Music] [Music] studs little little Pro tip if you want to listen to podcast and music but still protect your hearing I've started pairing the shocks open run headphones with your plugs this isn't a sponsorship or anything it's just my new go-to hearing protective setup when I'm in the [Music] [Music] shop [Music] after that it was time to build out the different tool holders and accessories for the French cleats for this entire French cleat wall I used only scrap wood that I already had including some Old Winery boxes we had picked up for free [Laughter] [Music] o [Music] is [Music] it was surprisingly fun trying to figure out how everything would Mount and what I could build with the scraps just puzzling it together piece by piece also I like an excuse to bring out the nail gun it's [Music] [Music] once all my cleat attachments were done it was time to play some woodworking Tetris well not exactly Tetris the beauty of the French cleat system is you can endlessly move things around as you want and and aren't stuck with your poor early [Music] decisions at this point I was getting close to the finish line but I still had a lot of organizing to [Music] do [Music] he [Music] [Music] right now I have my respirator that I wear whenever I'm creating a lot of fine dust my brooms and Shop back for cleanup and I can get a good air flow through the shop with the front door and garage door open but long term I'd like to get a more sophisticated desk collection system in the garage [Music] [Music] [Music] the space is all done I'm really happy with how it all came together honestly no major complaints on my end overall I think I did a pretty good job getting things off the floor and building storage solutions that allowed for us to store everything we needed to store in here Kyle's stuff our camping household stuff and then of course leaving plenty of room for all the tools and woodworking equipment that I have I feel like a workshop is never truly done you're just constantly changing and evolving it to fit what you need I plan on getting a table saw really soon so some of the space that I have right now will be taken up when that happens even then this is way more space than I've ever had before and I'm really excited to start working on some projects in here let me know what you think I'm curious to hear what you all would add or improve upon what I've already done if if you want to see me set up the garden shed mini Workshop that I worked in previous to this place I will link that above thanks for watching and I'll see you in the next one

Channel: Elena Makes

Views: 193,588

Keywords: woodoworking, female woodworker, garage shop, workshop build, diy, carpentry, carpenter, workbench, how to, French cleats

Id: IdkkPmjG10w

Length: 22min 8sec (1328 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 28 2023