Your Primary Work Space

[Flyingw]

How many of you guys have a very specific area where most of the work takes place? My garage is a 3 car and I have allot of bench space but yet 98% of all work takes place in a less than 5 square foot space.

[Darius1502]

Awesome space

[Jmoozy27]

I have a 8x12 shed with a "lean-to" on the side.

[jb2wheels]

I move the car out of the garage and set up a folding table for a work bench.

Too much stuff, not enough space.

[Billy Golightly]

Man, now that is organized! I need to get something like that put together in my shop

[The_Steve_Man]

I don't even want to show mine after yours Jim. Nice. Mine is 20x20 in the basement

[CRAZY70MAN]

I don't think i could find anything in a shop that clean and organized? Where is the struggle in a workbench that efficient and productive? Lol. I really need to take a few days, or weeks..lol to get organized. Tired of buying parts and tools only to find 2 of them a week later. Then again when you get 20-30 trikes in one shop, Armageddon is not far behind for organazation. Nice job on that work area

[2fiftyR]

That is a very nice shop. My work space is our old sugar house(maple syrup) that my friends nicknamed the garage of broken dreams lol. Its not well lit,poorly organized most of the time 2 rooms a 12 x24 that is well heated and a 20x24 that is freezing cold right now.I have several projects taking turns in the heat.

[86125m]

we have a pretty big shed but its full of parts, 7 three wheelers, a go-cart, lots of chainsaws and weed whackers. so to say the least we need more space.

[onformula1]

Flyingw- I am in the same boat as you. I have a oversized 2 car garage and a 3/4 house length attic with a floor that you can stand up in.


But 99% of the time I am in one small area where I have the Sirius radio, AC conditioner, laptop and fridge are close.

I have the tools I use the most on peg boards and toolboxes and a aluminium jawed vise on one side and a steel jawed vise on the other side. My wife always says you never move from that spot!

Before I moved my shop to the house I had a 30' X 33' shop with 3 roll up doors on two sides, 15' ceilings and a pallet racked wall I would walk a couple of miles a night just to get a simple project done!

I am very organized and the neighbors stop and say- You have the cleanest most organized shop ever, I guess that's one advantage to having OCD.

[onformula1]

That is a very nice shop. My work space is our old sugar house(maple syrup) that my friends nicknamed the garage of broken dreams lol. Its not well lit,poorly organized most of the time 2 rooms a 12 x24 that is well heated and a 20x24 that is freezing cold right now.I have several projects taking turns in the heat.

Best quote ever! "The garage of broken dreams" I have heard that before...LOL

[Flyingw]

My wife insists that her SUV has to be parked in the garage so everything is laid out around the perimeter of the garage. I can still get her SUV and my truck in under cover when bad weather comes in but I can't close the garage door. Oh well, the space works fine for the way I do things.

[El Camexican]

The thread brings back some memories...

Up North I always had a decent garage shop or access to a welding/machine shop, but my first 7 years down here were pretty tough. For a couple years I was buying used trucks and fixing them here for resale. My single car width, open air patio was my repair shop and paint booth. I had a tiny little 12V tire pump that I would use to fill a 5 gallon air tank to paint with. I’d mask one fender at a time and it would take hours to spray just a few square feet.

Brakes, engines, bodywork, whatever, it was shade tree mechanics without the shade tree. I remember trying to hand truck doors in such a tight space that I could hardly stand between the door and the truck and still had to try and pound a hinge pin in while supporting the door with one hand. The then newborn kid needed a room and I had to build an addition for her that took up half the area where I kept my tools and parts. Yea those were the days…

Then things got better and I was able to turn the “shop” into a backyard of sorts. My roller tool chest was still outside covered with plastic and my machinist and power tools were stored in plastic buckets in a small closet. One day after not looking at them for months I discovered that rain had been getting driven in through a small screened opening above the door and all the buckets were full of water. Pretty much everything was ruined. A couple years later we moved. Kind of like the George and Weezie.

My current garage was/is weird. It only has three sides. The overhead door is in the front and there is a wall on either side. There is no back wall. It opens up to the back yard which is 5’ lower than the garage floor. The yard is on two slopes of a hill, so to one side I can see the neighbor’s first floor windows over the fence and on the other side I can see that neighbor’s second floor window at the same level. Looking to the rear front of the open ended garage I can see straight into the neighbor’s second floor window as well.

Anyway, I guess the PO added on at some point because there are two large columns holding up the roof that are keeping me from parking four cars in the garage. So I decided that would be the perfect place to put my work area, between the two columns and off to the side. Just a couple problems with it…
My garage roof didn’t cover the entire garage floor, so I had to build roofs over my benches. That worked well until the rainy season came and the humidity caused all the wood drawers to swell and warp. I won’t even get into the issue of rusted tools. Then one day I discovered that termites had gotten into the plywood and hollowed out all the bases and even some of the lower drawers. The also ate a nearby window frame.

Like all this wasn’t enough I was constantly pulling the cars in and out of the garage to work on things, paint, grind and polish, etc. Sometimes when the bench would get full of clutter I’d drop the tail gate on the truck and work on there too.

Eventually my wife got sick of the mess and noise and having to park her car in the 105deg sun and came up with the great idea of building a small shop behind the house.
This time I learned my lesson. Everything is steel and concrete. The freaking termites followed me there, but now their diet consists of plaster and poison.

Because of the lower lever back yard I had to build a ramp from the garage to the back yard. I didn’t have a Tri-Z at the time, so the ramp was made with the Tri-Moto in mind. Turns out its exactly 2” wider than the inside of the two rear wheels of the Z. Needless to say it’s fallen more than once and I can’t drive it up while seated. When alone I get behind it and work the clutch and push at the same time. When it stalls things get interesting.

Anyway, I did eventually cut a deal with the guy next door that allowed me to build onto his fence and close my garage roof. I can’t drive street bikes or cars down the ramp, so I have to run up and down the stairs for tools whenever I have a project that can’t come to the shop. I guess at the end of this long and pointless tale I seem to always end up wrenching where ever I am, no particular spot seems to be the “primary” spot, but I do like to stay as close to the drawer as possible.

[onformula1]

The thread brings back some memories...

Up North I always had a decent garage shop or access to a welding/machine shop, but my first 7 years down here were pretty tough. For a couple years I was buying used trucks and fixing them here for resale. My single car width, open air patio was my repair shop and paint booth. I had a tiny little 12V tire pump that I would use to fill a 5 gallon air tank to paint with. I’d mask one fender at a time and it would take hours to spray just a few square feet.

Brakes, engines, bodywork, whatever, it was shade tree mechanics without the shade tree. I remember trying to hand truck doors in such a tight space that I could hardly stand between the door and the truck and still had to try and pound a hinge pin in while supporting the door with one hand. The then newborn kid needed a room and I had to build an addition for her that took up half the area where I kept my tools and parts. Yea those were the days…

Then things got better and I was able to turn the “shop” into a backyard of sorts. My roller tool chest was still outside covered with plastic and my machinist and power tools were stored in plastic buckets in a small closet. One day after not looking at them for months I discovered that rain had been getting driven in through a small screened opening above the door and all the buckets were full of water. Pretty much everything was ruined. A couple years later we moved. Kind of like the George and Weezie.

My current garage was/is weird. It only has three sides. The overhead door is in the front and there is a wall on either side. There is no back wall. It opens up to the back yard which is 5’ lower than the garage floor. The yard is on two slopes of a hill, so to one side I can see the neighbor’s first floor windows over the fence and on the other side I can see that neighbor’s second floor window at the same level. Looking to the rear front of the open ended garage I can see straight into the neighbor’s second floor window as well.

Anyway, I guess the PO added on at some point because there are two large columns holding up the roof that are keeping me from parking four cars in the garage. So I decided that would be the perfect place to put my work area, between the two columns and off to the side. Just a couple problems with it…
My garage roof didn’t cover the entire garage floor, so I had to build roofs over my benches. That worked well until the rainy season came and the humidity caused all the wood drawers to swell and warp. I won’t even get into the issue of rusted tools. Then one day I discovered that termites had gotten into the plywood and hollowed out all the bases and even some of the lower drawers. The also ate a nearby window frame.

Like all this wasn’t enough I was constantly pulling the cars in and out of the garage to work on things, paint, grind and polish, etc. Sometimes when the bench would get full of clutter I’d drop the tail gate on the truck and work on there too.

Eventually my wife got sick of the mess and noise and having to park her car in the 105deg sun and came up with the great idea of building a small shop behind the house.
This time I learned my lesson. Everything is steel and concrete. The freaking termites followed me there, but now their diet consists of plaster and poison.

Because of the lower lever back yard I had to build a ramp from the garage to the back yard. I didn’t have a Tri-Z at the time, so the ramp was made with the Tri-Moto in mind. Turns out its exactly 2” wider than the inside of the two rear wheels of the Z. Needless to say it’s fallen more than once and I can’t drive it up while seated. When alone I get behind it and work the clutch and push at the same time. When it stalls things get interesting.

Anyway, I did eventually cut a deal with the guy next door that allowed me to build onto his fence and close my garage roof. I can’t drive street bikes or cars down the ramp, so I have to run up and down the stairs for tools whenever I have a project that can’t come to the shop. I guess at the end of this long and pointless tale I seem to always end up wrenching where ever I am, no particular spot seems to be the “primary” spot, but I do like to stay as close to the drawer as possible.

And I thought I had it rough working around the "GTO" in the shop.

That shop looks nice, can't you enclose that back wall?

[onformula1]

Is that your YZ? It looks mint.