Who all wrenches out of tiny shop or no shop at all?

When i was a teen i worked under a large white oak tree. had a chain hoist hanging from a large limb. wasnt dirt it looked like asphalt from all the grease and oil that had built up to about 4 in thick . I would lay on cardboard. After i got married We Built a 20x28 pole shed with a floor. I dumped 14 yds of waste crushed limestone gravel smoothed that out put 5 yds of clean sand on top and 15 bags of cement. took the garden tiller and mixed it dry. Then sarurated it with the garden hose and tilled once over wet. Troweled it smooth. Total cost for floor $186.00 Made it tall enough to get a semi in and get the cab up. We made a living out of it for several years. Still own it. At our present location we have a 30x30 two bay professionally built metal shop that is attached to a 1600 sq ft cement block building+ there is a 50x30 slab out front covered by a metal canopy. It all stays kinda full. I mostly work out under the canopy when the weather is pretty. During very hot or cold or rainy (like today) weather i stay in the house. Nobody,s stuff here but my own dont really matter if it get,s worked on or not. Wish i would of had this place and tools when i was in my teens and twentys. Now i lament that i dont have a four post lift OldWolf

 

worked out side in the heat,rain,snow and cold for a lot of years in indiana,moved to florida,have a little one car garage.it's small,but that little building and cement floor sure is nice.

 

MAn...that floor was hardcore!! I've never heard of anybody doing it that way but you do what you gotta do! Sure makes you appreciate what you've got!!

 

I worked outside for years until my friend and I build my garage.Its only 26' X 26' with two 9'X7' doors.My friend raced all season with nhra and we did it in the winter months on his off season.It was cold doing it but worth it.....


Steve

 

Like a lot of you I worked outside a lot on my rigs, and still do. Lucky I live in Hawaii so we don't get the winters like a lot of you do, but it still gets pretty windy and wet at times!

I now have a nice 10 x 20 space where I can store all my tools and welders, and work on my motorcycles, motors, trannys, stuff like that, but I still work outside on my trucks and cars. It's not too bad though, just have to watch the wind and rain when working outside and something is opened up, to keep the crap out of it....
2Loose Willy


I've accumulated a lot of nice tools, two very nice welders (mig and tig), a good air compressor, a plasma cutter, it's nice to have a place inside to keep them and to do most of the work in there.

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I finally have a garage, but that's where I work on my motorcycles, no room for a car. And my driveway is a good 30 degrees incline, to a downhill. Everything rolls on down the road...

 

This is what I'm dealing with.. a one car garage built for a Toyota. I can't work with the door open or in the driveway because my neighborhood is Terrible... and the driveway is at an incline.... got tired of chasing tools into the street.

I recently changed the radiator, and the grille and hood went into the spare bedroom, and at one point I bent down and sat on an open drawer of the tool box sending it crashing onto my achilles tendon... oh well. Better than nothin' I guess...

 

For a while I used to have to get up around 4 am to go out in my old apartment parking lot to work on my cars(no repair work rules) so the cranky ol bat at the rental office wouldnt catch me, then my roomates Father would lend me his garage, but I had to be done by the weekend...now, I've taken over my childhood home, and have a two car garage(when I lived here as a kid, I worked in the street, trying not to get hit) - I would have room to work in it, if I could just get rid of all my old fish tanks....anyone want a 6 foot long aquarium? I have two, plus a few other largish tanks....

 

Howdy.

I've been in a Costso tarp Garage for 2 yrs now. Not bad. Cold. But not bad. Gravel floor so had to remove thw wheels from the floor jack. Good thing is you don't have to sweep up . True hot rodders use what they have.

 

a place to do some work on a car is better than no place,, my car started in a garage that flooded all the time at my old boss's house,, then i moved it to next to my buddies barn, and now its moved again to the grass at my future inlaws
maybe the next move itll drive so it wont have to be hauled

 

When I built my first hot rod in the early 70s I was renting and sharing a garage with the people that rented the other half of the house. It was a pain because I had to clean everything up after each work session. Then we bought a house with a small 1 car unattached garage, no heat no electric, ran an extension cord to get power & light. Now I have a nice big house and a tuck under garage with heat and air, it's like paradise. I guess you have to do what you have to in order to do what you want to. Sorta like paying your dues. I wouldn't want to go back to the old days but I think having once been there you enjoy it more when you're able to improve your shop. If you really enjoy building hot rods it will get better as time goes by, just takes time!!!

 

My Grandson and I started out doors on our project(s). Then because of rain (frequent) we put up a portable hut covered with plastic tarp. Then when it became too cold to stand it we moved into an old greenhouse. Yeah, the kind where people used to grow flowers! Plastic cover had ripped, so a biiiggggg blue tarp served us as a roof. During the coldest days we had to give it up because our wood stove just wasn't big enough to heat it. Spring arrived and we had at it again, that is until days became 75-80 degrees or more. Then the inside of our 'garage' became a hot house, literally! We would break into a sweat immediately upon going through the door. 100 degrees and more in there! So shut down again until the cooler days of fall. Ahhhhh, perfect. So---we've been near three years now. Grandson has moved on to other things, but I'm still at it, little at a time. As money allows, and as health permits. Here are a few photos. Perley

 

As a postscript to that ----------- we didn't have any power for a while, then ran a single wire from the house to give us 110 volts for lights and such. And we had a dirt floor, so we had to be reallll careful not to drop things. We spent a lot of time looking for nuts, bolts, etc. in the dirt. Then we put down a layer of plywood right on the dirt. That was good but it kept shifting around as we moved us and vehicles. So I put another layer on over this and screwed it to the bottom layer. Perfect!
Perley

 

ive got my 31 essex and 69 dart stuffed into my 20x20 with a lot of tools. i dont have any room to work inside but im real happy i have a place to keep everything. its real tight for 2 cars though. my duster has to sit outside which sucks, but it kind of keeps me from bring more cars home.

 

It is a Remington RG30N. They sell them at Menards. It is a natural gas "blue flame" heater. They are safe to use with no exhaust vent as long as they are burning correctly. It also has an oxygen sensor that will shut it down if the air becomes unsafe to breath. I have a ceiling fan in the garage that helps move the heat around. Setup works real well in my small garage.

 

What's a shop? I need to find out how to get a new cover for my Costco car tent frame.
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Single car for me, but I mostly work outside or If I can I try to use the garage bays, or paint booths at work which are really nice but I can only use them during the summer. I dig my single car it's a bit to small to work on the camaro, but I can kinda squeeze around it, the '29 fits in alot better, the problem with my garage is my townie neighbor, who has been leasing his place as well, but thinks he owns it for some random reason decides to relandscape the common areas of our complex, which included making some shitty garden/fountain koi pound out of the a portion of the driveway directly behind my garage door (without consulting anybody else first), making it so I can't "half" hang a car out of the garage to work on it, and need to do a 30,000 point turn to get any damn cars in and out of the garage...but It's still better then nothing, it makes a good snomo shop in the winter, as @ 9000 or so feet, we got socked in pretty good and basically from nov-may I can't pull any cars in or out of the garage due to the 30,000 point turn, slopped driveway, the north facing door which never melts out, and the really dangerous shedding from the roof makes you not want to be standing by the bay door for very long.

Outside of that it's great, having it attached to the house whenever I need to do little stuff that I can do with the door closed makes it really nice to be able to wander in there any time day or nite and tinker away. I'm hoping to find a better way to heat the garage as the bigger problem is the bay door doesn't seal, and it will get to below freezing in the winter.

 

No room in the garage , thats where the good cars are . I work in the driveway most of the time , last week was changing the rear end in my 5W..............Z

 

No shop, but a nice clean garage floor after 18 years and it was so worth the time and expense last year to do the aircraft floor coating. I can see so much better.

No lift, decent amount of tools, great lighting for sure and lots of aches and pains aquired over the years in the HOLE as I call it.

I love my garage wish it had a seperate john then my wife would never see me!

 

I just realized I have a pic of my space! It looks a bit better than it is, most of the room is used for movie sets(wikytiki's stuff), but I'm totally lucky to have any place to use!

 

This is where the majic happens at my house...weather permitting

 

My shop is fairly small and only has room for 2 cars but its not the room you have but what you do in it that counts

 

Yesterday I went up and took snows off to put on my daily. I had to shovel about 6" of snow out of my way, it was about 20' and windy; by the time I was done my pants were frozen stiff up to the knees. So I'm waiting for Monday and forecast high of 41' to mess with the exhaust. At least I can do that in the driveway and not in the mud and snow.

 

Heres my back yard shop/work area

 

I have grass, and a building just big enough for tools.

 

Just poured the footers on my new garage 2 days ago. Should be done in a few weeks weather permitting. Not real big 24 x 26 but more then I've ever had & can't wait.

 

I grew up poor,,dad was a gambler.Only thing I ever inherited was a funeral bill. Glad it was only one and not two.
I moved out of the city in 91. Bought 10 acres and got busy building my place, I slowly made a homestead and later started a shop. When it came time to start on the shop I checked around and the cement truck wanted $1600.oo for a 25' by 25' pad. Why 25 x 25?
Because I had a dream and no hands on experience.I did the best I could. I had been head painter everywhere I worked and the normal thing to do was work for myself one day. After I realized that the concrete guy would be making $1000.oo on me for the slab I decided to pour the bags myself.
I bought 500 bags from a local lumber yard that was going under. They even delivered it to me.I paid $1.oo a bag back then. So I ended up needing 525 bags.
First I measured and dug holes,then made tepees out of 2x4's to hold the 2 inch vertical pipe while the concrete hardened. Then I'd move the tepees to the next pipe and so on.
After that I framed in the floor and split it in two. I had a 12' x 25' area. I'd pour 18 inches wide at a time then screet.
I have some pictures. Anyway I could lay down 125 bags a day. Within a workweek the whole bottom end was done.I then welded up the top structures.
I built a couple of cars in there, even won a few local car shows on best paint.
I later added a 30x40 next to the tiny shop. I did the same process but larger.I got as far as the vertical uprights and the roof and roofing metal. In the dry so to speak.
My wife then wanted me to build a house so I've been out of the car world for the last 5 years building this damn house.I'm just about done. And now I'm getting back to finishing the 30x40.
I've painted a few cars in my garage and will move back into the shop when I evict some renters,,hopefully soon.

 

My "shop" is a Sears portable shelter that I've already had to do major repairs on due to the high winds here in the Okanagan. The "floor" is a bed of crushed granite that I hand bombed and rolled myself held in place by 6x8 timbers forming the perimeter. I use concrete pavers under my floor jack and jack stands. Thus the name of my shop; "Ragged A$$ Motorwerks".

Cheers ...
Aaron

 

I should have build my a little bigger, 40x80 and its almost full, but I can still work in it

 

Gone from a single stall, to a double stall, then a 3 car, now back to a single. Shit!!!