Friday, September 3, 2010

Basement Workshop Reorg, Part 2

Part Two, Intro.
Well part of my purpose in doing this series of posts is to show that you can make a less than ideal space a pretty functional workshop if you need to and that you don't really need 1000+ square feet to do it. I'm working in under 400 sq.ft. and have turned out full size passage doors, tables and cabinets even with the height restriction. A lot of sites on workshops focus on the large ideal workshop, I'm trying to focus on making my space work.

Changes to the space
Since moving in I have made some changes to the space that have allowed it to become a workshop at all.

1. Lighting
Before anything could happen some better lighting had to be installed so right off the bat I took down the single incandescent bulbs that had been there and put up two 4ft florescent fixtures in each half of the basement. I have since augmented this with single tube fixtures over some critical areas

2. Floor
Well the one half of the basement still had a dirt floor so I ordered 4 yards of concrete and a concrete pump and poured and finished the floor myself with the help of friends. It's not perfect but it's an improvement. Let me just say that concrete sets faster than you want it to.

3 Walls
The sandstone of the walls is pretty crumbly, flaky stuff and there were some voids, so we filled the voids with bricks, stone, and mortar and covered the walls with Quikwall from Quikrete. It's a concrete mortar with fiberglass mixed in for coating walls. Worked great and 6 years later it's still looking good.

Then I had a space I could put some tools in.

Original equipment
When we first moved into this house I had already collected a good many woodworking machines while I was living at my previous house where my shop was a deep one car garage. In my possession at the time were:

1: Contractors Table Saw with 30" fence and roller base
2: 14" Band saw
3: 15" floor model drill press
4: Bench mount hollow chisel mortiser
5: 12" portable planer
6: 6" floor model jointer
Various hand power tools, clamps, and a rolling toolbox

Believe it or not I was able to fit all of this in the basement, even the band saw which is 1 inch shorter than the ceiling height.

After living there a while I've added:
1: Bench top belt disk sander
2: A wood lathe
3: Bench top drill press, to replace the floor model (shares space with the mortiser)
4: A workbench

Now things were getting a bit crowded, some things had to change. We'll take a look at some of this things I've changed to work better in my workshop space in Part 3.


  1. What'd you put down for flooring over the concrete?

  2. With the limited ceiling height I have not put anything down for permanent flooring. I am currently using anti-fatigue mats to make things more comfortable and protect tools from drops. I keep them placed in front of the workbench mainly.