So a lot of people post their garages and they look all clean and perfect so I figured its time to get mine straight and post some pictures of mine. Before: After: (much cleaner but still needs work) A few of the projects and toys: 48 Ford Pickup My 65 Buick (first car) is behind the truck in pieces waiting to go back together. 28 Buick Roadster (the frame is under that mess and the nailhead is behind it. I have all the parts, now I just need the time!) Honda Cafe project New Toys Stomp Shear Compressor (just waiting on the electrician to wire it)
I don't have a garage at my house now so I needed some space because I'm a packrat. It is an old barn that they used for an industrial manufacturing facility for wood forms, fibergl***, phenolics, etc. The owner is a long time friend of the family and they moved to a bigger location so they were more than happy to rent some space to me. I occupy two floors of about 3300 sq. ft each. The whole building is probably between 10000 and 15000 sq ft. When I first got in there I thought I would never need any more room but now I'm trying to con him into renting another part of the building so I can store all the stuff that runs in a seperate place from the ones being worked on. I really should just sell some of my toys that I don't use but I just can't part with things. I have a sickness, but I'm pretty sure we all do. Every time I walk into that place I still feel very lucky to have it knowing what other people are stuck working with and some of the ****py garages I've rented over the past 15 years.
Holy ****!!! need another project? You have a bit of everything in there! I have a three car shop with a lift in one end and am now pouring another pad for a two car garage with a full upper floor for parts and stuff to get cars out of my shop to make room for another project. A guy can't have too much room!
Actually, even the before pictures look good to me. There's space, tools, light, heat. Looks good. You do have a lot of projects going on, but they all look interesting.
I like to keep busy...to say the least. The funniest part is that I don't do this for a living. This is just a hobby garage. It is like a little bit of heaven every time I open the door. As far as heat, it's not too warm. I have that torpedo heater but I won't even think of firing the furnaces. The owner told me that it used to cost him somewhere in the range of $1500 a month to heat the whole building when he had operations in there. So, it's never very warm. The torpedo heater does just enough to make me not shiver. There are quite a few tools in there because if I find out something exists then I feel the need to have it. I try to stay away from tool websites and catalogs so this place doesn't make me completely broke.
Thanks. I bought the F-1 a few years ago off of a buddy's brother who had to make some back child support payments. I have just had it sitting in my shop. I'm going to do something with it one of these days. I found a mustang II at a local junkyard and they let me have the whole front of the car for $125 so I might do that in the front end of the truck. I haven't really made up my mind yet.
And my wife my thinks I have a lot of projects. My original plans for my workshop was for 72 x 40, but we only ended up building 36 x 40. Now I want the rest of mine built.
I've set mine up for working on things, not parking. I've setup one wall as nothing but shelving. About 8x18 is setup as an office/utility room w/ overhead storage. I've got a panorama shot on my profile. Without all my additions you could easily work on 4 cars at once, with room to spare. You could easily park 4 or 5 cars depending on their size. I've had the full size Bronco, a full size pickup, and 3 motorcycles in there at once, plus loads of spare ****. Once I clean it out I'll have my 55 parked in there, one bay for working on projects, and an area to work on motorcycles (w/ m/c lift,) plus plenty of shelf space for storage. I'm contemplating building another shed to house the **** we are going to sell, swap meet stuff and the like. My advice, build it as big as you can afford, but make sure you can add on to it at a later date. Also, I used an online design tool at FBi buildings to help decide the layout of my garage. http://www.fbibuildings.com/Pages/FBiPlanner.html Didn't end up going with them for the building, but it was helpful to see what could fit in the garage.
Thanks Keith. I don't want to hijack the thread, so I'll leave it at this.... My plan is to have 4 cars and I don't want them to be tight in my building. And, like you, I want an office area. My dilema is that the area in the acre behind my house, that I want to build the shop in, is covered with very nice, m***ive old trees and while I'm no tree-hugger, I want to minimize the tree destruction because they look great and keep my house in the shade until about 10:30 in the morning in the summer. So....I want to get the building right when I put it up, because I don't think I'll be knocking down any more trees for an addition.
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