10 X 12 small shop

[TB Roye]

My shop started out has a place to tinker after I retired. It is a 10x12 Tuff Shed with a loft. I bought it at HD thinking it was the same as the one Tuff Shed sells, not! This is basicly a storage shed with 6ft side walls and door. The real Tuff Shed has 7ft side wall and a 6ft 8in door. I installed the loft, wired, insulated and drywalled it. It has 7ft between the floor and floor joist for the loft. After I got serious about woodwork every thing changed and it got croweded and hard to work in. Recently after much thought and seeing Tom Clarks 18 drawer work bench I decided to remodel and get rid of the white cabinets and put everything into the workbench. Getting rid of the white cabnets and adding the new work bench made a big difference. I managed to put everything from the cabinets in the work bench and have a couple of empty drawers. I moved the planer stand (with lathe on it in picture) out to the garage with the BT3, Jointer and Miter saw. so now all that is in the shop is the drill press, bandsaw, router table and a moveable workbench that hold the compressor and shopvac. Everything is movable execpt the 18 drawer bench. The router table, Lathe stand (idea from Tom Clark) and workbench have littlle plastic feet on the bottom so I can drag them around without casters. In a small shop it works fine. I haven't got all the drawer organized yet need to put divider in some and move some things around. The drawer blocked by the lathe stand are the junk drawer, where I can stash thing I don't use very often. So far it works fine, I will be rearanging the other corner with the workbench and parts bins and the router table and cabinet as I figure out what I want. The tall cabinet by the door is going to be redone also for better storage. The loft has wood storage, mainly plywood and MDF, The garage has a lumber rack on the wall for storage for lumber. The trim on the bench and Lathe Cabinet is from the woodworker pack sold by Lumber Liquidators a few years ago. It is Brazilian Cherry(that is some hard wood). The last picture is the supervisor and myself after a hard day in the shop. The drawer slides are from Grizzly and the drawer pulls are from Lowes, they were on sale .50 each. The bench top was finished with 3 coats Satin Polycrylic on the top (mdf covered with hardboard) and the bench was finished with 2 coats of Minwax Polyshades Classic Oak. The lathe stand is finished Minwax Woodfinish cherry stain on the plywood and finished with 3 coats of water based Polycrylic. They were fun projects and got me back into the wood working mood. Now turnig pens for Christmas presents. It take planing and trial and error when setting up a small shop but they can work.

Tom

[Pappy]

A lot cleaner and better organized, Tom. Now, can you leep it that way?????

[Uncle Cracker]

Very nice job... You can get a lot of tinkering done in there, and tinkering is good for whatever ails ya.

[JR]

Drawers! Drawers! Drawers!

Very nice looking shop, Tom.

JR

[crokett]

Very nice. My first 'shop' was a 10x12 shed with no loft. Mostly it was a place to store tools. I did as much work as possible outside. Yours is a whole lot nicer than mine ever was.

[siliconbauhaus]

Nice work mate.....and that chair doesn't look too bad either....I wouldn't mind one myself.

[cabinetman]

Looks like you really got organized. Small spaces can work with planning like you put forth. Good going.

My first workbench was the floor of a living room in a 2 bedroom apartment. My first shop was a 10' x 20', that I shared with another guy. It might have been Pappy that said, "It was so small you had to go outside to turn around".

At one time I had set up a 30' travel trailer that I gutted to be a shop. By the time everything was set up inside, there was no room to work. If a small space is the problem, being able to roll out tools and work outside becomes necessary. An overhead cover helps for some protection, like bird stuff, and rain. Even in Florida it can get kinda cool, like in the low 30's, which makes some of those winter days a PITA.
.

[bigstick509]

[Crash2510]

very efficient use of limited space

[dlminehart]

I have a slightly larger area, maybe 9 x 18. Having your 10' width would be a help . . . allows you to put cabinets and moveable tools around the sides without eating into too much of the central work space.

I'm planning on building Tom's 18-drawer cabinet. Yours looks great!