Rebuilding my garage workshop for woodworking and tinkering

It's time to make one last effort. One last attempt to nail this 540 before we rip these damn ramps out of the

garage

. You can call me a quitter, that's not how I'm getting depressed. There are too many ways to get hurt on Berm Peak to spend another moment on this. So we are moving forward. The

garage

ramps, if I'm honest, are a relic from 6 months ago, when there was more space than I ever dreamed of. As most of you predicted, the novelty wore off quickly and we ended up using the storage under these ramps more than the ramps themselves.

But luckily, they are made up of large, flat pieces of wood that are very easy to reuse. So when all is said and done, we'll have plenty of wood for today's project, along with a surplus of fasteners. Of course, I didn't go all the way to the floor with the wood paneling; That would have taken me 10 more minutes. But after taking a good healthy look at this space, I guess it won't matter. As we build a backyard bike park, this shop expansion will need to address the shortcomings of our bike repair area. We built this section primarily for bike repair and it works great for that.

But many of my larger tools were left homeless, and for

woodworking

projects we've been using the driveway. Therefore, the expansion of the current

workshop

will need to address carpentry, general touch-ups and tool storage. That part is easy. Looking back, I regret buying these extra tool boxes, no one ever said that. That takes care of tool storage and some extra workspace, but we can't get away from the rest of this project. Let's make the workbench a little deeper because why not? But getting it to line up perfectly with the old bench is something I have no chance of achieving by measuring.

So, I'm attaching the back of the new table to the existing frame, leveling it, and then tracing new legs for it. This eliminates the guesswork and ensures that this new structure won't look like the plugin it is. But you're probably thinking that this bench looks a little short, and that's actually by design. We're going to build a little shelf on the end that's the perfect size for this portable jobsite table saw. By making the table saw flush with the bench, we have effectively created a

workshop

-sized table saw for only $200. Well not exactly, but we will have a larger area to stabilize the wood coming out of the back of the saw.

I'm also making an adapter for this vacuum hose so it fits into the dust port on the table saw. The other end fits any 1-7/8” shop vac, like both of mine. I'm also doing this for the miter saw. This reduces sawdust by about 75%, which is fine for one or two cuts. But I will still have to open the doors for those high production days. Before working on the finishing touches, the Diamondback sign should be placed in the bike area where it belongs. I like the symmetry of this new wall design. Once the general structure of our store is complete, it's time to get organized.

One of the best things about all of these tool boxes is that we will end up with a lot of empty drawers. That means we have room to grow. In the future, entirely new categories of tools can live here. And our miscellaneous hardware isn't so varied anymore thanks to this organizer I bought at my local hardware store. We also bought a new tool, a drill! Even this inexpensive drill press will greatly increase the precision with which we can drill holes in things. I already have some projects in mind. Because of the sawdust, I placed our sander right next to the door and attached a hose just in case.

And now that we have all our tools set up, we can use them to continue working in the workshop. When the ramps were here, we had an easy way to load and unload bikes from the top rack. That's why we need a new way of getting on and off the bench. Since there's a table saw up here, I'd like to avoid the ramps since Drama couldn't resist the old one. Even in my last house I probably stood on my workbench at least a couple of times a week to reach something high or set up a camera, so these ladders will have more uses than just reaching bikes.

But with the loss of our ramps, we have to go downstairs to unload the bikes. No big deal, but we also lost the ability to go up and back up the ramps. Well, we definitely lost the ability to attempt 540, which is probably for the best. Behold our new garage workshop, one of my favorite home improvement projects to date. I'm going to assume that very few of you are sad to see the ramps disappear, since we rarely use them. And now we have a fully functioning

woodworking

shop just steps from the forestry road. And since spring is only a month away, that will come in handy.

If you're considering rebooting the garage this weekend, I left links to some of the items we used today. If you found this entertaining, check out my new channel, Berm Peak Express, where we delve into more specific topics. Although I don't promise you that you will learn anything. Anyway, thanks for riding with me today and I'll see you next time.