since i bought my house I havent done much of anything. I have the worlds smallest garage,and,I have somehow convinced myself that it is impossible to operate out of. So far it is used primarily to store boxes of junk and store my buick in the winter. However, tonight i saw a buddy with about as small a workspace and he seems to be ok in it, so maybe I just have some lame mental block. anyone interested in posting pics of your work areas? the smaller the better.
Seems to me that if you can park a Buick in it, it's not nearly the worlds smallest garage. Organize your boxes up out of the way and you should be able to work in there. All that I'm going to have when I move is a 1 car garage. OK for my Model A....not so good for my '66 Thunderbird.
check out http://www.garagejournal.com/ it's another RYAN site and some fellas over there have done wonders with small garages. check out the "12 gauge garage" it's a great use of a small shop later jim
How long ago did you buy this house? Sounds like you got a house with a small garage attached and seems like what you need instead is a large garage with a house attached. Maybe time for a shop upgrade. A lot of guys use to and some still do just work outside. Is that an option? Maybe pour a slab to give yourself a good work surface if nothing else.
x2 and there are a couple threads on here that already deal with this as well. A little searching and you can find them.
thanks for the link fellas that helps a lot! maybe i can make this work, A wise man once told me " Do something, even if its wrong." might not be comfortable but maybe i can man up and make use of this little box of a space.
If your garage looks like the one in the first picture you have some reorganizing to do. I built my FFR Roadster in a one car garage (picture 2) although it is a fiber gl*** body and I didn't have to fix any rust or do much welding. I used peg board (picture 4) to store some parts and I had boxes of parts in the living room behind the couch (picture 3) and some under the bed. Since then I have moved and bought a place with 4 garages. I still don't have enough space.
hey that wheeled dolly looking thing is very interesting, whats that all about? also i LOVE the wheels in the living room!!. you know what. set those tires in front of the couch and put a nice piece of gl*** on it and BAM storage and a stylish coffee table!
That's a body buck. It also has a shelf under the body that you can store stuff on. The one car garage was directly on an alley so I had no driveway either. I would roll the body buck out in front of my neighbors garage when I was working on the car. I still have the body buck and use it as a rolling storage shelf. I added the shelf after I took the picture below. I like the idea for the coffee table.
You don't need pics of my garage. You need to take the situation in hand. I built the Pusher in a 10x24. We had to crawl under it to get to the drivers side unless we opened the garage door. But I didn't use my garage for storage. Move the boxes out and start working on your old buick. You may have to roll it outside for some things. That's the way they used to do it anyway.
I work in a paved lot about 25 something miles from my house with a bunch of homeless people that live in dead RVs. My spot is 10 x 12 maybe? Or just enough room to walk beside the car and have a few feet between the tool chests and the front of the car. My best advice is to put everything you can on casters so you can move it out of the way easily. You fill up every inch of space when you leave, and when you return you move the stuff that's in your way. Like tetris with tool chests. You move the car closest to the opposite side you want to work on. Like anything else, you get used to it. Dealing with the neighbors is by far more challenging. Good luck and read the garage journal, we're not the only ones.
Hey, thanks for the compliment river1. My garage is 20x22, which isn't as small as some. But there are a handful of things I've done in it to make better use of the space. The most important was deciding that my wife and my daily drivers would get parked someplace else. Then I also built a shed to hold a lot of the stuff that would have simply been sitting on shelves or the floor as storage. Lots of cabinets up high and fold-down work surfaces let you park a car without giving up working space. Here's the link to its thread on Garage Journal. I fit nine work surfaces in this one little garage.
Here's mine, a one-car carport. Hotter than hell in summer (deep south), too damned cold to work in, in the winter. I make due though and I never have to worry about having enough light to work by.
Loft that ****a, and that guy with the Porsche, thats just a sickness, my bathroom is not that clean, and I have a cleaning service once a week. Like Felix Unger.
Well, that's all cleaned up for church on Sunday. Most of the time, it looks more like this: (The old Porsche gets dirty, too.)
Thank god, I was frightened, thought maybe you were a pod person or an alien. Then again thats still cleaner than my bathroom. haha.
Garage Journal is a killer site, just be prepared to start dreaming because some people have great setups and it's sickening in a good way...
inspiring replies. thanks for your time guys. hopefully tommorow i can get a loner engine stand and get started taking apart a couple donor motors.Ive got to get crackin on SOMETHING. I have two stupid 305 chevy engines that are about to become my personal little cl***room. Certainly i can make due with the room i have to take these apart and start learning something. even seeing how you guys have turned small spaces into WELL LIT small spaces helps. I can see that something as easy as shelving and decent light will go miles towards making my shack workable. (btw i like to think im not normally this foolish, but for whatever reason the tiny garage has just convinced me its useless.probably due to the fact that everyone i know has these amazing lofted 3 car garages full of cars parts and tools.) simple jealousy maybe, wich is easily the singhle most WASTED emotion. gonna get over this.
The Jalopy Journal
