Workbench From Reclaimed Wood

Part of the plans for building a garage was to put in a work bench. We built it the length of the back wall of the garage. There were a few things we wanted to incorporate into it. We wanted it high enough for the tool box and the air compressor to fit underneath. We also wanted a few cubby's /drawers to store things in, as well as a shelf underneath for additional storage.

We built the bench using reclaimed lumber that we salvaged from crates and pallets. We started with the frame for the top of the bench. We put five 2x4 pieces coming out from the back of the top to create drawers under the top of the bench. We made the mistake of not calculating where our seam for the plywood that would be the top of bench would go. So after it was all together we had to pull out the middle drawer 2x4 and move it to support the seam.

We put bracing in each corner to help square the bench up.

Then we put the base of the cubby holes on.

Next we put bracing the length of the wall to support the back of the bench. We left the middle bracing off till then bench was up because it needed to be lower to due the plywood on the bottom of the cubby holes.

Next the legs were attached and the bench flipped over and attached to the wall.

We put a bracing on the front under the cubby holes to support them.

Then the counter top was put on using plywood.

The bench was made completely from reclaimed wood so it didn't cost a thing. We did buy the peg boards and hooks for it.

The Garage

We recently bought a new home and one thing that was a must for me was a garage. I've never had a garage in any of my homes since I moved out on my own and it was time to finally get one. Warming your car up in -40 weather, scraping windows and brushing snow off cars gets old quick especially as we usually have very long winters. So a garage was a must. We decided to build it ourselves or at least as much of it as we thought we could handle. This was probably the biggest DIY project we'll ever do.

Our garage pad came poured with the house so it was one thing we didn't need to have done. We did have it  enlarged to 22' by 22'. We made a few changes from the normal standard garage. The main being that we turned the roof so that it sloped front to back rather than side to side. I thought it would make the garage a little less imposing on our tiny back yard. With the turn of the roof we were required to install a much larger header over the garage door to support the weight of all the roof beams resting there. With that we decided to raise the height of the walls to 9 feet to accommodate the size of the header. Making the one little change of the roof caused for a lot of other changes which added to the cost of the garage. We also went with a storage loft in our trusses so we'd have lots of additional storage space for seasonal stuff.

We started our build on the May long weekend. With a lot of help from friends and family we got all four walls up and sheeted on the first weekend.

We did end up hiring a crane to put the 500 pound beam in place. We didn't want to chance it dropping on someone if we attempted to raise it ourselves.

On the second weekend we managed to get all the roof trusses up and the roof sheeted.

Construction slowed down a bit at that point. We hired someone to install the garage door and to shingle the roof. We were going to attempt the roof ourselves but its slightly on the steep side so we went with a contractor instead.

Next came the man door and window installation. We had a little trouble with our man door and had too return it twice before we got the right one.

Lastly at the end of June we ended up hiring contractors to install the facia and soffets and put the siding up. We found the peak walls just to high for us to manage. Now its nearly done, we still need to do the electrical and paint the trim.

Mostly Homemade Mondays

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Costume Day

We had a costume day this weekend to work on Mass Effect 3 armour. A friend scaled the pattern to everyones sizes. I printed all the pieces out. Laid them out to all be taped together to form the pattern. Then cut them all out.

I got a lot of floor tiles from Walmart to make the armour out of. It has the same texture already on it that the armour needs. My friends have used between 4-6 packages when making theirs.

I traced my patterns out onto the floor tiles with a sharpie on the back smooth side of the tile. I made sure to label the back of each piece so later on i'd know what it was.

After all the patterns were traced out, they were then cut out using my new favourite tool, a creative versa-tool with the hotknife point. A utility knife also works really well for cutting them if you don't have a Hotknife.

After all the pieces are cut out I cleaned up the edges using a dremel with a disc sander. I used it to also softened up the top edges on each piece and round it out a bit. Make sure to wear a dust mask when doing this, it makes a huge mess.

That's as far as I got on day 1. More construction to follow.