[Bob in St. Louis]

Hey all.
I've decided that I've had enough of my current work area, and have chosen to make some improvements.
I thought some of you might enjoy the story and pictures, so here we go....

No telling on how long this will take, but one things for sure....it ain't gonna be quick.

The short story:
Tina and I built this house about 12 years ago. Since day one, the basement workshop has been the "dumping grounds" for anything tool or equipment related. At times it's been near impossible to walk through. Other times it's been pretty clean and ready for the next project. It has served me well while I've build audio projects like speakers and acoustic panels, but has also serves as "headquarters" while I remodel bathrooms and kitchen, and overall general house stuff. Being the car guy that I am, the big blue MATCO toolbox is the unit that served me while I worked on cars for a living. Instead of oil and grease, it is now generally coated in a light dusting of sawdust.   

The area is 12'x19'. The ceilings range from 7.5' to 8.5' depending on where you're standing in relation to "stuff" in the ceiling, which is the belly of the main floor of the house.

As of March of this year, here are some pictures of what it looked like. It it too dark, too cluttered, too dirty, and too unorganized.


The East wall;
-- Note:
-- The black (dark) ceilings with crap hanging.
-- The two florescent lighting fixtures that no longer work. The desk lamp hangs on the wall to illuminate the space.
-- The equipment sitting on the workbench. I've got too many tools that take up space on horizontal surfaces....there's nowhere to work on anything.




The North wall;
-- Note:
-- The HawthorneAudio 15" PSI Silver Iris OB coax drivers on the ceiling.   
-- The automotive signs that I've collected over the years. Instead of decoration, they now serve as the main lighting for the room.




The South wall;
-- Note:
-- My pride and joy air compressor. I love this machine.
-- Above the compressor, you can see my 25 year old Sony stereo receiver. I bought this new. I love it.
-- To the right of the compressor, you can see the screen of my Samsung Galaxy 10.1 tablet that streams Pandora to the receiver. They feed the pair of 15" PSI OB drivers.
-- The dark, black ceiling is full of garbage.You can see the ONE of four lighting fixtures that is operational.
-- This wall is almost entirely shelving. It sure seemed like a good idea when I built it, but over the years, these shelves have served as the main dumping ground for anything that has no other home in the house. There are things here that I haven't touched in years. These items should be thrown away, or if valuable in some way, stored in a place where they aren't "front and center". They don't need to be within arms reach if I don't use them on a regular basis.
***** THIS IS KEY *****
Due to the way the house was designed and built, there are "pockets" in the ceiling that have, to date, proved useless. I have designed a way to make these pockets useful. I'll be putting shelves in the ceiling. I know....that doesn't sound right, but you'll see what I'm talking about soon.
I call them "ceiling shelves".
All of the items on the South wall will either be thrown away, or relocated to the ceiling shelves. I will retain a few shelves on the South wall. This will be limited to items that I use on a regular basis.
***** ALSO KEY *****
The items scattered across the workbenches will have their own dedicated rolling carts. These carts will be lined up, side by side, where the existing shelving presently resides. This will give me more workbench space.
The items that I will build carts for are:
- Tabletop drill press
- Tabletop sander
- Router table
- Bench Grinder
- Sanding table

**** On this wall, next to the air compressor will be the dust collection system.



The West wall;
-- Note:
-- This is my toolbox. Another piece of equipment that I love. It's awesome.

[Bob in St. Louis]

....a few days pass.....

The things to note are:

-- I've got four new fluorescent, twin lamp four foot, lighting fixtures. For the time being, they're hanging by chains. Once the ceiling is finished, They'll be screwed to it. The level of illumination in here is amazing now.
-- Speaking of the ceiling...The "stuff" has been removed. I installed plywood on the floor joists and got the first coat of white on it. My goal is for as much shiny white paint as possible to help brighten the place up. This is a manufactured home (not a "stick built"), so it's got steel c-channels in the ceiling. I'll be cutting about eight of them out, (six can bee seen in this picture) which will give me another 13" of ceiling height.
-- You can see the "ceiling shelves" beginning to take shape. Those pockets in the ceiling are now half closed off which gives me eight individual shelves. They range from four square feet each to about six square feet. That should give me enough space to clear out most of those wall shelves on the south wall.
 


-- If you look close, you can see a 13" tall steel i-beam. It used to be black, it has the first coat of white on it.
-- You can also see four of those steel c-channels (black) that will be cut out later.
-- Here's the deal....By now you're probably wondering why I'm painting so soon. Well, it's psychological. I NEED to see something bright and clean. It's been too long being black, dirty and dark. Besides, painting black needs a few coats anyway, so the first coat right now brightens things up. The added illumination is amazing in here. It's sooooo bright now.
-- The c-channels will need to be removed with an angle grinder which makes an amazing amount of sparks. I need to get the plywood in the ceiling to hide the insulation away. I also need the room cleared out as much as possible so I don't set the place on fire.
-- You can see a few of the ceiling shelves clearly in the picture.



-- Here's a great shot of the ceiling shelves. (Note the 15" PSI on the far wall)
-- I do have a fire extinguisher and a smoke alarm. Just in case. something happens someday.
-- These next two pictures where taken with a fisheye type lens. It was the only way I could zoom out enough to get what I wanted in the image.



OK here's a neat shot:

-- Left side of the room, on the ceiling you can see one of the shelves. The left side shelves are about 2'x3'.
-- Right side ceiling shelves are about 2'x2'.
-- The three black c-channel beams will be gone. On one of these channels is the main water supply line, the cable, internet, and phone lines, in addition to a few random lengths of Cat-5 and RG-6 that carry date to and from various places. I am NOT looking forward to the day I have to cut, splice, and re-route all that. Above the white painted plywood on the ceiling I've installed empty PVC conduits that I'll use to route the water and electrical stuff at a later date.

[Bob in St. Louis]

Finished for the weekend. Didn't accomplish much worthy of bragging about, just chipping at the big picture, slowly....

I've been populating the ceiling shelves with the contents of the south wall shelves, and removing the wall shelves. Tina is very happy to be receiving my hand-me-down shelving. A few things found a new home in the garbage.
Overall things are going well, despite not having much time today, or this weekend.
Next weekend I've got four days off. That'll be great.

Remember this photo:



Here's the progress I've made:
Things to note;
- IT'S VERY BRIGHT !!!!! (thanks again Scott F.) 
- Ceiling shelves on upper right and left of the image are full of the tools and equipment from the south wall shelves.
- The 20 year old Sony 2 channel receiver and Samsung tablet in the upper left corner feeding me wonderful music complements of Pandora.
- The tall vertical fan (gray) with the green furnace filter on the bottom.....That's my temporary dust collection system.

[mcgsxr]

It is always tough to "remodel" the work area, since everything always migrates to there from everywhere else.

During my recent basement finishing project, the last area to get attention was the unfinished area behind the dividing wall.  I built in a couple of extra shelves, and brought in some more floor shelving.  it is now well organized, but full.  I do have my workbench cleared off (well, at present there are about 2 cases of empty Coors Light on there from a party, but you get the idea!).

The painting white is working well Bob, and the new lighting is really good!

Nice workshop music system too!

[MaxCast]

label your shelves and don't forget to use those fishin poles this weekend. 
I love mini hardware store rooms.

[JohnR]

I'll be putting shelves in the ceiling. ...
I call them "ceiling shelves".

    

[Bob in St. Louis]

John, yea....that did sound a bit retarded, didn't it? 

Rich, I use those poles about every fifteen years. 
They normally live in the ceiling, so that's where they sit until I find a new home for them.

Mark, Amen brother.
It feels like I spend most of my time moving things out of my way, only to move them again an hour later.
Needless to say, the trash cans are full.

Bob

[Bob in St. Louis]

Day one of a four day weekend:

Here's the south wall. Shelves are gone, wall has first coat of white primer.
If you can't recall what this wall used to look like, it's the third photo in my first post. Lots of mess.



The legs are coming together for the tool stands.
Lower than furniture (speaker) grade plywood, but higher quality than typical home improvement store quality.

[mgalusha]

Nice! I have the same compressor, it's a gem.

[Bob in St. Louis]

Yea Mike, I happened to notice the tag on mine the other day, and it's 11 years old. Still running strong. I love that machine.

Here's todays progress.
SHAMELESS SHILL ALERT:
A very good buddy of mine sells casters as his primary career. If you need any, I'll get you two connected.
Per my "contractual obligation", I am not at liberty to tell you what I paid for this particular bounty of casters.
Suffice it to say, he hooked a brutha up. 

/shameless shill.


Got two carts assembled "enough" to hold the tools and get them off the workbenches. (yay!!)
At a later date, I'll fancy them up, paint them, and install inner walls and doors.
I'm thinking that when I design the "umbilical" (110volt, vacuum) I'll not only store the piece of equipments individual tools, supplies, extra parts, etc..etc..., but I'll have the entire cavity of the cart under a vacuum to keep it clean.
That's the plan anyway. 
But that's another day. For now, one of my main goals is to get all this "bench top" equipment off the bench.

On to the pictures.
No more words necessary...........







More tomorrow......

[Bob in St. Louis]

[MaxCast]

I like the tool stands.  Are you going to paint the floor?
Also, Don't know how far the garage is away but have you thought about putting the compressor in the garage and running a line down stairs?

[Bob in St. Louis]

Hey, thanks Rich. 

The garage is on the basement, and takes up about a third of the square footage on the north side of the house. The workshop, hall and bathroom take up the center third, and the HT/Audio room take up the southern third. I've thought about putting the compressor in the garage, but the humidity here eats compressors like candy. The rust spreads like a cancer. Yea, I'd love to put it, and the dust collection system, out there but......

Most of the flooring is covered in scrap carpet. It's a very low nap industrial grade carpet that I got from a demo. I'm a big wussy when it comes to standing on cold concrete, and as you know, mid-western basement concrete floors can be in the 50 degree range in the wintertime. So that's a big "no" on painting the floors. What I'll eventually do, is line the center width of the room with rolled heated floor elements, and cover it with carpet. I'm a pretty clean person, and have a vacuum cleaner specifically for the workshop. So carpet, in my situation, will last a long time.

Bob

[Bob in St. Louis]

One of the goals my little woodworking life has, is to build a very high quality router table.
This is not it. Not even close.
I was tempted to start that project, but in the end I chose to "Frankenstein" an existing $99 Ryobi table I already had.
So what you see here is me sliding the table, complete with the router installed through my table saw trimming it down to create the size that I need to fit the wall.



The fourth table, against the wall with its new brothers.
Note the tablet (upper left) entertaining me via Pandora through the (near) vintage Sony receiver and the Silver Iris OB speakers (not visible). 
I'm now using a spare "OneAC" power conditioner to help the audio equipment.
Man, I love technology.

You can also seen my ghetto air filtration system.....the fan with matching green furnace filters folded in half and taped to the sides.
Actually works pretty well, as long as nobody kicks the fan!




Close up....
( I think this is enough for the day..... more later....... )

[Ericus Rex]

Very smart system!

[Bob in St. Louis]

Very smart system!

Thank you. That's my goal. 

[WireNut]

I really like your miter saw / table setup. Can I copy it 

[mcgsxr]

Good heavens, that is one organized rolling collection of tools!

I have a decent toolbox in the garage on wheels, but don't own a lot of bench based tools.  I have a drill press, that just sits behind my workbench, and gets pulled out for a specific build.

I borrow access to table saws etc, no way I could fit any of that into my basement - the utility side is only around 12x25 or so, and contains many items already (fridge, freezer, furnace, water heater, workbench and a few storage racks).

Great progress!

[Bob in St. Louis]

Wirenut - Heck yea you can steal it. That's one of the reasons I do threads like this, to help out my fellow dudes.
I figure that I've pulled so much good audio advice from places like this, that I try to give back when I can.

Mark - Mine's about the same size, 12'x 20'(ish) so with space being the premium that it is, in order to operate efficiently things have to be clean and organized.
But having the fridge, freezer, etc....in your room, there's no way to make it a workshop. Although you could use it for storage for "stuff", including lesser used tools, and plastic boxes full of more "stuff", like audio parts etc....

[Bob in St. Louis]

It's my lucky day. A coworker knows of my project and gave me a fairly new dust collection unit.
Seems it was given to him from a family member, some sort of estate thing.

It's too big to fit between the compressor and the four carts, but only by about five inches. For the time being, I moved the drill press cart out of the way.
But the final solution will be to modify the pallet the compressor sit on.

I'm really digging this. Fairly quiet for the amount of suction is has. Retail is about $400. Nice.
After the fellow "passed on", the unit sat with a couple feet of sawdust in it for some months (years?), which accumulated moisture and stained the lower bag.
Between that, and the main hose seems to have collapsed/kinked. That's all it needs, no worries.
The bags I can wash. The hose I can replace, as I've got 40' of new hose waiting to be "plumbed" in the ceiling of the workshop.