The tale of the workshop (no, this is not about tango)

A few weeks ago I found a box with parts of a wooden view camera I started to build a few years ago but never finished. I decided I'd like to finish it, but I quickly remembered why I never finished it. I had no good place to work. You try to use a table saw in the kitchen, especially if you have a girlfriend...

At the same time, on the side of the house there was this room which used to be a solarium a long time ago. It had glass panels on one side, access from the outside and inside of the house. Sadly, it's been in a horrifying state since I bought the house. The glass panels were damaged so the prior owner covered them up with plywood panels, the floor was dirty concrete, the walls had wall paper decades ago, but now all the was peeled and smelly. The door between the room and the house looked like a legion of rats chewed through it (it was missing about a foot by a foot of one of the corners.

So, it occurred to me I could make myself a workshop in that room. But being on a tight budget as I'm trying to paying my debt it needed to happen quite cheap.

So I gathered stuff I had around the house :

about 10 2x4s
a couple of 1x2s
some partially broken sheets of glass
screws and nails
two partial boxes of vinyl tiles
a few partial cans of paint
a door lock
commercial grade floor sealant

I bought a few things from Home Depot
4 sheets of 4x8 sheet rock ($22)
tile adhesive ($12)
patching compound ($7)
3 sheets of plexy ($9)
A cheap door ($22)
a 2x4 sheet of pegboard ($5)

Then, I removed most of the wall paper and sanded down the walls a bit and installed the panels over it. I used one of the glass panel frames which was damaged beyond repair to fix the others, sanded down the frames and painted them brown along with the door frames. Out of the paint I had I combined them into a nice shade of beige (with Deb's help I managed to avoid having my workshop painted pink as that was the color I got on my own ...) and I used it to paint the walls and part of the glass frames.

I replaced the door, luckily I already the door handle/lock. I then used the tiles to cover the floor, and amazingly after I was done I was left with two tiles (quite miraculous considering that I never really counted to see if I had enough). I finished painting the walls and the trim, filled gaps with caulk and coated the floor with the sealant.

I removed the panels with were used to board the glass panels and I used two of them along with the 2x4s to make a worktable (the plans I used are here). Since I will need to use a router I made the table so it can easily accept the router table and while I was at it, I made it to accept a miter saw and of course I had made a panel to cover the surface back to a flat table.

I brought in the table saw I bought at a yard sale a few years back and brought it back into shape. Brought in the drill press I had in the garage. At work we are converting a storage room into a "war" room so there were a lot of shelves which were removed, so I asked and got them for free. I installed some of them. Took a little time to organize my tools and other gadgets and ...

voila!









It's not finished by any means, I still have things to paint, to clean, to repair, but it's a functional workshop!