My garage has always been a place to work on cars or other projects, not a "mancave" (I hate that term actually) or an adjunct party room. But after I was retired I brought home a lot of equipment, tool boxes and tools and the place got really crowded, add 20 or so Mini enthusiasts trying to work on their cars, or share a donut and cuppa Joe with those who were and it just became unworkable, so I decided it was time to make a few improvements.
The first and biggest improvement I wanted to make was to find a way to get more space, and since I couldn't make the garage any bigger, that meant some stuff had to go - somewhere. To that end I needed to rethink my tool storage and how things were arranged. I belong to the Garage Journal forum, and I cribbed a lot of ideas from those guys, then tried to fit them into my spaces. My garage is a normal 60's era 2 car, with an extended end, so it's like a garage and a half.
Here are a couple of shots to show you what I was working with...
This is the right side of the shop, there was an old tired built in bench with some pegboard behind it.
This is the other side, I built the wooden workbench and brought the metal one with me from Sandy Eggo. I also put up a lot of shelves, which quickly got loaded down with stuff.
In the middle were my big SS toolbox, behind that was my Craftsman roll cabinet and top box, and on the left is another roll cabinet and my first toolbox - a Snap-On top box.
So, my plan was to get rid of that old kitchen cabinet on the right and move the SS box there, then tear out that old workbench and build in a couple of large roll cabinets to replace the two smaller ones. Along the way I decided it was time to paint the garage, the old drywall was painted a dreary yellow. I also wanted to get rid of the miles of shelves over the wooden and metal benches on the left and all the crap on them too.
Close to the left garage door (viewed from the street) was another small niche filled with a couple of shelf units, my air compressor and small welding table and who knows what else....
So, that was the plan......I started by finding a coupon for Harbor Freight where the roll cabinets I wanted were on sale for $359 each. They're quite well made, with ball bearing slides, drawer liners and made out of pretty heavy metal. I bought two.
Here's a longer view of the shop to show the extra length on the right side.
Next up it was time to remove that old poorly built bench - I thought maybe I could reuse some of the wood, then decided it was better to start fresh - I put the kitchen cabinet and all the remains of the bench on Craigslist "Free" section and both were gone in what seemed like minutes!
Once I stripped it down I found where termites had been at work, but interestingly enough, they seemed to have only attacked the soft pegboard, they hadn't bothered the structure. We had the house treated a few years ago and this was old damage. Once I tore it all out I found the PO hadn't drywalled behind the pegboard or the bench, so rather than just patch what was there I tore out all the bits of drywall so I could get it all even again.
I fixed all the loose insulation, taped up all the holes and got ready for new drywall.
Once the drywall was up and mudded, I started imagining how to build in the roll cabinets....
I decided that if I left them on the casters the bench height would be to high, so I decided to build them into a framework, then build a new top out of 2X 6's, similar to my other wood bench.
So I removed the casters, took out all the drawers and started figuring out how to do it. The floor slopes towards the garage doors at the industry standard of 1/8" per foot, so that meant one end was an inch lower than the other - given the work bench would be about 8' long. More complications. I bought some new 2X4's, and cut a taper on the edge starting at 1 inch on one end and tapering down to nothing on the other, that gave me a level surface to set the cabinets on once it was done, I then added another 2X4 under that to give me a base to build on then build a frame around them. The notches were to clear frame members under the cabinets so they would set the frame of the tool box squarely on the edge of the 2X....
ection on this. That's fantastic now we're like a real garage 
