New Garage

[scogin918]

I am moving to another house and am looking for some advice on design (space manangement) and maybe a lift. There is already some good info on lifts in this forum that I have seen. The ceiling height is 10 1/2' and it is 19' deep and about 24' wide. You can see before and after pictures of the floor after I painted it with H & C Ivory color 2-part floor epoxy. The Ivory brightens up the garage immensely and I'll be able to see all of the nuts and bolts I will surely drop. The 1st pic is of my current 2 car garage.

[woodman13]

Congtats on the new garage. I have a 11' ceiling shop (35X50) and the ceiling is almost to short for my lift. I have a 9000 # eagle 2 post for low ceilings. I bought mine off ebay and I am pleased with the lift up till now. Build as much storage as you think you will need and then double it. Car guys always have more stuff than they realize.

good luck.

[astroracer]

Hey Robert, for "space management" I would recommend the use of casters on every piece of equipment you own. Everything in my shop rolls around except for one permanent bench attached to the wall and a big shelf unit. This makes for a versatile shop layout which can be changed whenever you like. It also makes for easy cleaning and tool access as everything can be stored out of the way and rolled out only when you need to use it. It works well for me and I wouldn't do it any differently now.
Here is a link to my Fotki site with a lot of storage and organization ideas.
http://public.fotki.com/astroracer/tools_storage__orga-1/
Mark

[jaybee]

Well, for starters the obvious. You can't have too many air drops, electric outlets, or lights. Lights need to be on a separate circuit so you can still see after you run too many tools on the same circuit. My lights are inexpensive twin-4' flourescent fixtures that plug into ceiling outlets. I'm happy with them. Consider putting a single shelf running continuously around the side and rear walls. Put it a little too high to hit with your head (unless you like that sort of thing :) ). It doesn't sound like much but if you add it up you can see that it replaces a whole bunch of floor-standing shelving without taking up any floor space. I have some old kitchen cabinet bases for part of my work bench and a pair of upper cabinets as well. Painting them is on my list so they look "professional", but so far the appearance hasn't bugged me enough to get me on the job. A lot of home centers have prefab countertop in stock that you can buy at a decent price. In my case I found laminated 5/4" pine much like butcher block in the clearance carts at Home Depot. It was cheap and I can pound on stuff all day long without hurting it. The best peace of mind addition to my garage has been a flammables cabinet made of steel. I didn't worry too much about the gas cans and such before. Now I don't worry about them at all. Even when I grind and weld.