After living in our house for over a year now, it became time to do something about the mess in my basement workshop. I mean, it looked liked this:

Lovely, uh? I didn’t think so, too, but there were just to many projects to get done before I could start workshop projects. But now that I have finally started, it’s ‘go big or go home’.

The plan:

• I’m going to build a workbench. I mean, three of them. I’ll come to that in a minute
• Additionally, I want to build a desk in the workshop for electronics projects and all the tiny little things that would just get lost on the big workbench.
• All the chemical stuff (like glue, paint etc.) will be locked away in a cabinet. And that should happen before my son starts gluing his tongue to the desk or his sister’s ears to the… you get the point.
• Last but not least, some not shop-related stuff has to go down the river of life. Or into the room where the heating system is installed. Or into our future garage. Or the future shed. Or…

 

I watched a lot of youtube videos for inspiration and ideas about workbenches. Want to try it yourselve? Get a week or two off of work and start here. Or here. Or here. Or…

Additionally, I tested out, which size would be good for my little 20m² workshop. It should be capable of handling big projects like cabinets, but still small enough that I could move around it.

This was the first idea that I came up with:

OK, this would have taken me weeks to build and would have been far to expensive. So, the second “optimized” version now looks like this:

• The workbench consists of three individual workbenches, each in the size of 120cm x 60cm
• All three together build a huge work surface of 120cm x 180cm.
• All three workbenches are on wheels. That way, I can move them out of the way easily, if necessary.
• Beneath the tabletops, I’m going to build drawers that will hold all my supplies and tools.
• The whole construction is made out of sheets of OSB and rough sawn construction lumber that you can buy in any given big box store.

And of course, I did a build video for youtube:

Next, I’m going to build the drawers. Stay tuned!