My biggest shop upgrade in 19 years! How to turn any space into an awesome workshop.

I'm very excited about this store tour because it's the

biggest

change in 19

years

of working in this

space

. I started about six months ago. I began to reimagine my store and started from scratch to create my online course, the weekend work

shop

I wanted. put my entire woodworking philosophy to the test and prove that a small

space

is not only affordable and practical, but above all, highly productive. I want your work

shop

to be a space you like to be in and a place you might want to walk into. A two-car garage built in 1956 measures 19 feet by 19 feet is about 360 square feet a little smaller than the average two-car garage today Like many stores, mine evolved slowly, organically and a Bit by chance, I gradually acquired new tools and made space for them.

I collected more and more materials and hardware, always convincing myself that, well, maybe I can use them someday, it seems that all woodworkers tend to have some hoarding tendencies and before you know it, a lot of it. someday useful things just become cluttered, this affects your workflow, your overall well-being and can eventually lead to loss of productivity; At worst, you may not even enjoy going to your

workshop

anymore because working in disarray is so frustrating on the other end. new carpenters who want to set up a

workshop

but don't think it is possible in a limited space and let's face it, in the real world many people need to share workshop space with bicycles, camping equipment, Christmas decorations or worse yet, a car, My objective.

The weekend workshop was to put into practice all the lessons I have learned over the

years

to help you transform your workshop into a more thoughtful and productive workspace and to point you in the right direction if you are just starting out make sure Check out my three principles for getting the most out of your workshop during the weekend workshop. Don't worry and yes, sharing a space with a car is definitely feasible to start this transformation. I stripped my workshop to its bones and purged myself of tools, workbenches. and materials that I almost never used is some time and honesty with myself to determine what I really needed to be productive without a doubt the best thing you can do to make the most of a small workshop is to put everything on wheels and I mean everything, if place on the floor, put it on wheels, if you have to share the space with a car, mobile shop furniture makes it easy to push things against the wall when you are not using them and if you are lucky, have a dedicated shop space as mine is very nice to be able to rearrange furniture and try different workflows, so what I'm going to do is explain my current layout and show you the 14 shop projects that will be available over the weekend.

Of course, the main goal of my organization is to organize tools into zones so that I don't take too many wasted steps back and forth. One of the things I love about this workshop is that there is a lot of natural light in addition to the garage door. I have this window that I installed years ago and then I have this door that also lets in a lot of light and what I did when I started redoing my store this time was I finally got rid of my old fluorescent lighting fixtures and replaced them with all these LED light fixtures , they are energy efficient and are super bright.

Each of these little four foot sections has 5000 lumens of brightness and they all connect together in whatever configuration you want, although I've already gotten really good natural airflow in this tent with the doors. I thought it was important to install an air filtration unit, so this one hangs from the ceiling and is very handy to use. It comes with a remote control so you can

turn

it on this way. Run it for about an hour to completely eliminate all thoughts. You probably already know that this is where my table saw normally lives? I would like to be able to connect my vacuum cleaner from here directly to this saw and that way I have the wood coming out this way.

I can use my basic mobile workbench as an outboard table if needed, so this is my basic weekend carpentry course work focus that I use all the time and I like that. It's so light and portable that I can work on something on my table saw and they just come here to store parts and assemble parts here. I have some of my existing workshop furniture, this cabinet with sliding doors and then I have my drill press here I am. I'm using this stand I made years ago and it's a little too tall for this, so I'm going to make a new stand for that drill press pretty soon, it's just awkward to work on at this height, these are some of my favorite projects from the weekend workshop course and they are also two of the probably most time consuming ones, they are not difficult to do but they have a lot to offer and of course this is the BMW Plus has the same design as the BMW but I added shallow drawers to store tools and of course cabinets or doors here to store whatever you want.

This may seem really daunting, it has 73 drawers, but believe it or not, it's just not that hard to do, you just have to find your Zen and Spa by making all those drawers and I still have a ton of empty drawers in here. I don't know what I'm going to put, but it's for hardware. I have nuts and bolts and all kinds of things there and they move over here. This is the ignition course tool cabinet. I still use it a lot and then this is where my regular BMW is usually parked when I'm not using it.

I love this one. This is my mobile miter saw stand. It barely takes up any space, but it has built-in extendable tables, that way its wood is completely supported across its entire width and I have built-in extendable tables. extension fences so I can attach stop blocks to both sides as needed and I added a drawer here to store clamps or any accessories I have and down here I just have a cut out cube that I found when I was using my miter saw A lot of times I ended up with little ones cut pieces and I always tried to throw them in the trash and I'm horrible at basketball so I could never get them in there and then they just pile up so put a Can do it there and here.

I added a modular hand tool panel, so what I did was I combined all my hand tools with the really essential ones and this is a French cleat system so I can change them whenever I want. I need to have, you know, pliers, a place for wrenches, screwdrivers and whatever one of my main principles in setting up this workshop was to keep similar tools with similar tools; In other words, I have a sanding station here where I can store my best tools. Commonly used electric sanders. I have a place for sandpaper for random orbit sanders and then slots here for hand sandpaper.

Plus, I have drawers for sanding blocks and accessories. A drawer here for even more. One of my

biggest

problems was having tools. different places in my workshop, it was just a lot of wasted energy going back and forth trying to find things, so I have a drill and driver cabinet here and I finally have everything I need for my drill and my driver and I have a place here down to store them, as well as the chargers here. I've kept this top empty because I like to take the bit out of my board and look at what I want here instead of having to carry this around wherever I am. working and get the bit out, put it in and then I can slide it back into position.

Okay, of all the projects in the weekend workshop course, this is my absolute favorite. I love this project. This is the practical half-lap stroller. it's all done with half lap joints, it's a really good exercise and there are about a million uses for this little thing. Right now I find myself doing wheelies all over the workshop. I keep my table saw safety gear there, so you know. just take it over to the saw every time you want to use it and then come back and of course right next to it I have my drop down Work Center.

This is one of my favorite designs I've come up with. I love having this, it's like a complete foundation. I love having some hardware in here and then I use it to set up my laptop when I'm looking at blueprints or just to set things up, maybe like an assembly table and again, a good amount of drawers, but it's not at all difficult to do, and by moving them this way, I'm entering a kind of wooden storage area of ​​my store. This is my mobile wood cart that stores solid wood in one and then gets cheap. products on the other side I initially designed this several years ago and for the weekend workshop I updated the plans and with brand new videos and simplified the building process a lot, oh man I did build a lot of clamp racks over the years . and I think this time I finally got it right.

All of this seems to be working very well. By the way, this is a great space to store things behind the door many times. It is a type of spa that is always overlooked. I've always liked it. Keep my naps here this time to keep things similar with things similar. I've included a box here to store my glue and a towel and a glue spreader, so again, everything you need to hold is all in one place, this is the top tool holder. one of my favorite space saving units, so I have my disc and belt sander on one side and to just flip it over for my spindle sander, I've included a drawer down here to store extra sanding discs and other accessories for both tools.

I know we are here. I have my router case that I built a long time ago and I can feel it in the shop every time I need to use it. I designed this wood wrap to be lightweight, easy to build and you can put the entire unit on the wall and I designed it so that it can store eight foot long boards that don't fit on my mobile wood cart. One of my design considerations on this unit was to keep it fairly shallow. I don't want to store. There's a lot of wood in this that I have to go through and find what I need to make it extend out from the wall a little bit.

This storage unit is the first project in the weekend workshop. I wanted the first project to be a super easy one that you can do in an afternoon. It's all made with dimensional lumber that you can pick up at the Home Center and you don't need to tear off any of the pieces. You won't need a table saw. Simply use a miter saw to cut all the pieces to the proper size and simply assemble them. I call this REO which stands for really organized store storage rack and moving here is finishing the corner. I have a buy a sink and I have this cabinet that I also built years ago that stores some finishing things and here are my new spray paints for the course.

This is a somewhat silly and fun project. This is the final finish and basically. store everything to finish and I built a lazy susan that you can use on top so you can have small projects, you can finish them with spray lacquer and you don't have to keep moving around it has space to store brushes, stir sticks and in the front I have paper towel rollers Kraft paper tape mineral spirits extra rags basically everything but the kitchen sink is in this ultimate mobile finishing stand Hey, I hope you enjoyed checking out my 2020 workshop, it's been a long time coming .

Since 2001, it is now a much simpler, cleaner, brighter space and is one that allows me to actually be more productive. I know where everything is at any time and I'm not as distracted by tools, materials and any other junk that just takes up space, don't forget, if you want to learn my three principles to get the most out of your store and check out the final workshop course of the week and everything it has to offer, head to the weekend workshop, relax, it took me Six months to create this course and over 40 years of experience to discover what it should cover to help anyone create their own sanctuary of carpentry.

Thanks for watching everyone.