This week is officially going to be garage week at Stone and Rose.  We will start with workbench building DIY and move onto storage and organization, and finally have a post on DIY signs for a dad or grandpa’s garage.

Since we moved into our house last fall, and the school year had started for me, I didn’t have time to organize the way I would have liked, and the garage became a bit of a disaster.  And that’s not good.  A dad has a lot of things to do in a garage.  Bikes and Razers need fixing.  Dog houses need building.  Plans for new wooden swords are left as subtle hints.

It’s hard to get all those important chores done when a guy’s garage looks like this.

My husband designed the garage so that it would fit both vehicles and then have room for a workbench on the side.  By the time we got to building the workbench, I was blogging and working a lot of DIY projects around the house, so I requested a little workbench of my own.  We’ll just say that it’s probably better if we don’t have to share tools or space.  We’ll just say that…we organize things….differently.

I have a lot of ideas for things to do.  For example, here’s the leftover barn wood (fir) from our floor.

I have soooo many ideas for projects with this wood!

The first step was to get the wood for the bench.

Since it was wider than what we needed, we had to rip it down the length.  That way, we would have a work surface (not too deep) as well as a bench for storage underneath.

Then we had to get the walls ready to attach the bench to.  This first involved cleaning all of the junk stuff out of the way.  Then we attached 2 by 4 pieces all along the walls to act as supports.  For our house, because we used ICF styrofoam blocks and concrete to build, that means we don’t have ‘studs’ like a stick frame construction house.  Instead, we have ‘webbing’ that you have to find behind certain marks on the styrofoam in order to bear weight.

We also used posts to support the fronts of the bench.

Very, very carefully, we then lifted the shelf part of the workbench up onto its supports on the wall and put the posts (cut to size) under.  Used brackets and a lot of screws to attach everything nice and secure.

Then the top portion of the shelf went up.

But, the best part, for me anyway, was my own, much deeper workspace at the end of the garage.  We thought deeper so that I would have more room when I paint furniture or get into whatever mess I am making at that point!

Come back to see what we did behind the benches (yes, those flimsy and ugly shelves got the boot) and to see the finished garage and one happy husband!