“Lighting is a key factor in a shop. I had all the walls and the ceiling painted white to reflect light and make the ceiling seem higher,” Mark explains. The result is a long, narrow, glistening shop. Several white-faced cabinets and benches with white drawers provide plenty of storage and reinforce the clean, tidy look Mark wanted. For a touch of color and comfort, red, yellow, blue, and green rubber mats are placed at key workstations.
6 comments:
This guy is not messing around. He has all the bench tools that David describes as essential for having your own shop: the table saw, miter box saw, bandsaw, and drill press. And then he has even more bench tools on top of that! I’m not surprised he has a lathe, because he is interested in doing so much “more artistic elements of woodworking”. Our shop could certainly take a tip or two on organization from Mark. I think the component that would be the most useful for us if the sanding disk organizer. Our system for organizing new sanding pads is just to stack the boxes on one of the shelves in the tool roo. I like how this system puts the different pads on different shelves and the shelves come out of the unit. It definitely saves space and easy to use. Finally, it makes sense that Mark would paint all his walls white for maximum light reflection in his basement shop, but I thought it was funny that the author of the article described the foam floor mats as an added splash of color. I think those mats have a much more practical (rather than decorative) use – they make the floor softer in parts so working standing up is less strain on his knees.
I love seeing other people’s shop layouts, because I am always thinking about how I am going to set up my shop when I can finally get one. The shop looks like really the optimal use of the space he had to work with. I do not think you could fit anything else in there reasonably. This is also the biggest restraint I see here. I think if it is the only option, converting your basement like this is a great use of it, but honestly, I would be hesitant to set up shop in a room with this many confinements. Ideally my shop will be built from the ground up to fully accommodate large scale projects, and still have room to grow as necessary. The lighting and the vacuum system seem to be real perks in this shop. Those are definitely ideas I will hold on to for future use. Also I think one of the best features he has in there is the microwave which did not get enough credit in this article.
This shop is certainly one that I would love to work in, it is incredibly well organized and neat which is quite important for me in my shop space, which is surprising guessing by the state of my desk. You can tell that Mark has been doing this a very longtime and has very thoughtfully developed the layout for his current shop. It is well equip and he has certainly thought about the kind of work he will be doing in his shop. His strategy for making the space light and bright is highly effective and doesn’t read as a basement home shop whatsoever. I think one of my favorite tricks in the article is the one that he uses and engine cart in order to move some of his heavier projects around and it also provides him with an adjustable height work space, which is so useful. With the nuances and thoughtfulness of the space it is easy to see the enthusiasm for the work he is doing down there and I would certainly be thrilled to have a shop like that in my home.
As It turns out like many of the other “TD” types that have commented on this post before me I share the same interest in looking at other people’s shops and how they like to set them up. Basement shops are great to look at and learn from because they always present interesting challenges for those working in them. It’s obvious in this set up that Mark made one of those challenges, lighting, a big priority and it seems that he does a good job working around this challenge. Another big challenge that I don’t think he talked about to much but he did work with I imagine is the struggle of having low ceiling heights in basement shops. He deals with this problem by leaving a lot of open space between tools and making sure that the lumber that he is processing can stay horizontal for as much of the process as possible. Which is just honestly a better way of storing all kinds of lumber in a shop.
The first thing that came to mind after reading about this guy's shop is just "wow." Mark has absolutely thought out every single decision he made about his shop. From the general placement of tools to exactly how far apart they are, he has got this down to a science. For example, he talks about putting one of his tools just over eight feet from his lumber rack so he can still easily pull out the lumber. Another cool thing that he clearly thought a lot about is workflow and how materials and projects flow through his shop. For example, his resaw bandsaw is near his wood stock, and his jointer and thickness planer are right next to each other. He also has a finishing area almost that puts all of his sanding tools near each other. While I do have a nice garage shop back at home right now, I can't wait to put this concept to work in my shop when I get my own house.
I really admire the respect this guy has for his space. A few years back I read Tidying Up by Marie Kondo, and it really changed by perspective about how I look at my spaces and what I allow to take up space in my life, especially in regard to my work spaces. The way that he has thought about each item, the purpose it serves, and the way takes up space in his shop is a reflection of how he values his work. I like that he has taken a space exactly how it is and found ways to enhance it and make use of each individual nook inside of it to serve his work, instead of gutting it and making it his idea of perfection. I also think that our students could take a few notes on how conscious he is about keeping his space clean. I have, more than once, been assigned to cleaning the tool room on a call and I think that something relevant and valuable that I was taught when I was young is that if a task takes less than 2 minutes, do it as soon as you know it needs to be done. This applies to properly storing tools, fitting things in their shelves or boxes, making sure everything is in its spot, putting hardware back correctly, coiling a cable, etc. If these kinds of things are done immediately, no crewmember would have to lose a full call to cleaning the tool room or hardware room.
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