The first step in making the idea of starting to create things with wood was to build a workshop.  A daunting task at first, but with the help of some friends, some books and the internets – you can do pretty much anything you set your mind to.  We were lucky enough to have a double garage on our property with three doors – one on the east side and two on the north side, but as we wanted a back yard for our dog, we got rid of the parking pad on the north side and put in grass – with that, the ability to park two cars in the garage vanished, and freed me up to make the North half of the garage into a workshop.

An architect friend, Erin, with hands on remodeling experience gave me some ideas, so I started the project, putting in a small cinderblock wall so that when a wet/snowy car is parked in the ‘garage side’ that it would not leak through to the workshop side (funny slopes because of the multiple doors…).  I then added mortar and some J-bolts to the mortar to give a solid base to attach the framing to.  Then Erin came in to ‘help’ (in a big way!) with framing out the workshop.

Once complete, I wired sockets, boarded up the garage side, insulated and boarded up the workshop walls.  Then, apart from hiring an electrician to run the sub-panel before I boarded up the walls, that was it!

While the double-doors opening onto the grass seems odd at first, it gives good access, allows me to work with bigger stock and while losing wall space, definitely makes this half-garage workshop a lot more flexible than if the doors were boarded up.