At Last

When we first moved into this house, I built a long built in workbench along this wall and hung cheap cardboard like cabinets above it. This worked okay for awhile but had it's issues. The biggest one was that I had no place to assembly anything. It usually meant taking a sheet of plywood and laying it across saw horses which worked well until it was time to clean up and run the cars inside. Plus the workbench was always clutters and I was forever shuffling things around to make room for what needed done. 

I decided that my next shop would all be on casters so it was easy to pull out from the wall, use and then push back next to the wall as the end of the day. I tore out the built in workbench and those cheap cardboard big box store special overhead cabinets and started over. I'm not sure how long ago that way but it was probably five years ago. 

With no workbench with drawers to store things, I ended up with a huge pile of stuff in the above corner of my garage. It extended out of view at the bottom of this photo. I have lived with it as I gradually built a fleet of mobile carts to house various tools and a workbench on wheels to assemble things and drawers underneath again to store things. The cheap cardboard overhead cabinets were replaced by custom built overhead cabinets that should last as long as any potential grandchildren should they take care of them. The last piece of the puzzle was to finish clearing this corner of the garage.

After picking out any remaining woodworking tools from the pile, I was left with a bunch of ropes and tie-downs, extra-long extension cords, chargers, painters tarps, packing blankets, spare tire, one mortising machine and more odds and ends that always seem to be necessary for home ownership.

I hadn't put another overhead cabinet in this spot thinking it was too close to my scrap wood cart in the very corner but the wall was still a blank canvas. After mulling things over for awhile, I decided not to overthink it and just get a closet system that can be customized to hold some clear plastic totes and the next day, it was done. I even have several extra totes should they be needed in the future. I even sorted through my chargers and mounted the three I use frequently to a board plugged into a dedicated outlet instead of sitting on my drill where I had to move them before drilling anything. 

Now that it is cleaned up, I will probably leave the spot now uncovered bare for the time being but ultimately, I could build some sort of mobile cart to hold another tool. My mortising machine behind could fit the bill though as little as I use it, it would be kind of a waste to go to that much effort. In the back of my mind, I have thought that perhaps I might upgrade to the 21st century and get some sort of 3D mill, laser etcher, or 3D printer to use. All would be handy to have but are hard to justify without some sort of small business approach. But that is all down the road and I think I will spend a winter just being able to access my scrap pile without moving or climbing over a single thing.