Garage Shop Upgrade
A couple years ago, I upgraded a wall in my shop with more outlets and dust collection. This year, with a desire to get more organized, I finished a much bigger and needed upgrade to the other wall. I installed wall-to-wall 42" cabinets and let my OCD fly free and spent as much time on little organizational details as I did on building and installing the cabinets! Check it out and hopefully it will serve as inspiration for others.

The Befores. Old peg board, shelves and janky cabinets from the previous owners of our house.


...and the Afters. I now have more storage than I actually need, which is a nice problem to have.

A lot more light and everything stored out of the dust. Best of all, a place for everything and everything in its place. My OCD is purring like a warm kitten.

It started with replacing the lower cabinet first since the new one is mobile and will double as an outfeed table for the tablesaw and there's a lot of plywood to be processed soon.

Already 100% better

The drawers are fitted with push-to-open drawer slides. They didn't work well in later drawers but here they're perfect. I initially tried push-to-open hardware on the doors also so that there would be no pulls to snag on your pants or what-have-you. It didn't work so I found some rounded pulls that have less of a chance of snagging. I ended up using them throughout the cabinets.

My Mark Spagnoulo inspired drawer sliders keep all my drawing supplies and french curves.

but wait, there's more !

On to the wall and cabinets. Gotta clear everything first.

Down to the studs and more outlets added. You can never have enough.

My end goal is to have a shop in which I can close the doors and air condition it during the brutal Florida summers, so I insulated the wall while I had it open.

Up with the bead board!

I actually prebuilt the cabinets before starting on the wall to cut down on shop downtime. They took a week to build, another week to do the wall and mount the cabinets.


and another two weeks to fit the inset doors.

I replaced my toolbox with a floor to ceiling cabinet that will house both regular tools as well as my woodworking handtools. I've always wanted one of those beautiful hanging tool cabinets so this is a nice compromise. I'll later swap the CNC with my workbench so it will be right next to the handtools.

I tried using push-to-open drawer slides on these drawers but they so wide but shallow that they would rack and the slides wouldn't release evenly. I ended up replacing the slides and adding drawer pulls.


Every nut and bolt sorted, organized, and labeled. *sigh* So...happy...

I 3d printed inserts for several of the pockets in the organizers. For some hardware, I just didn't need an entire pocket. Also, if you leave PLA plastic in a hot car, you end up with the Windows logo. Oh well, still functional.

All my most frequently used tools are hung on french cleats at easy reach. Adam Savage's idea of first order retrievability couldn't be implemented for everything but I chose the tools I reach for most and kept them out of cabinets and drawers.

The sanding cabinet. Labels are coming soon.

All the little sanding items are stored, easily viewed, and pulled. Sanding sticks, sanding needles, rifflers, and small files.

The two top drawers have a sliding till in them to maximize vertical space in the drawer. Since my screw drivers are out, this was a good space for the less frequently used screw driver type stuff. I dumpster dived some foam and used my CNC to carve out pockets. I made sure the pockets were generic enough that I could re-organize as my shop evolves.



The last thing to do was to build the hand tool cabinet. Previously, everything was in different places and most were in their manufacturer's box to keep it nice. Now everything is together and easily reached.

The tool roll and plane socks used to hold tools all the time, now just for when I travel. The little drawers hold all the little miscellaneous tools, parts, auger bits, etc, that I don't use as often.


The chisel rack kinda got fubar'd. It will either get rebuilt or covered in stickers, but it works for now.


An overall view of the shop. The only request my wife has ever made regarding my takeover of the garage is that we should still be able to pull our cars in. Not a problem; all tools get rolled up against the wall and can be pulled out as needed.


Thanks for checking this out! Hope it helped!

A WIP. Already working on some nerd art to truly make this shop my Cave!
You have a great looking shop! Thanks for sharing.
Wow absolutely fantastic great job! And best of all, you can still fit at least 1 car in there! The only thing I would have changed is each of those outlets would be on a dedicated circuit.
Thank you! I'd have liked to do exactly that but both my main panel and sub panel are completely full.
@WoodGate said: