Awhile back I bought a floor-standing drill-press which I mounted on a universal tool base. While the universal base was functional, I didn’t think it was a great fit for my top-heavy drill press as it always ungainly to move around.

I recently added a floor-standing bandsaw to my workshop which gave me a second chance at getting these larger tools on mobile bases.

After dismantling my plywood cart to make an indoor plywood storage case, I no longer have a way to collate and organize offcuts and scraps. This has led to a lot of material being leaned against any available surface and subsequently sliding, falling over, blocking something I want to get to or … all of the above. I needed to get an offcut cart, fast!

The biggest downside of working with plywood is, well, working with plywood. Or rather, everything up to that point: getting it, handling it, breaking it down and storing it. By sheer luck, our garage has a nice straight-line transition into the house where we have a long wall which would make for a great spot to store plywood. Only if I can keep it pretty…

In the second post on this series, I want to reflect back on some things, big and small that have made a notable quality of life improvements in my work space.

We have a gas-powered 2-stage blower but last year, I got a cordless 1-stage snowblower for ‘free’. I made a specific point to use this as my primary snowblower as much as possible so see if it was up to the task (spoiler: it mostly was).

This rubber-paddle based unit comes up short in one area and I’m hoping that swapping out the auger will correct that shortcoming.

I’m not quite sure what motivated me to clean the garage door but here we are. I think this was originally motivated by wanting to do a wipedown of the brace bars and finding out that it wasn’t a simple ‘wipe and done’. Once I cleaned the support bars, the rest was a inevitable rabbit hole.

Unfinished basements tend to become dumping grounds: where seasonal supplies, boxes, foodstuffs and supplies go to live out their lives in darkness. I wanted to make this space brighter, easier to use and just nicer before it got out of hand and fulfilled its destiny of becoming a dumping ground.

Ever since building, using and ultimately, living with my previous miter saw station, there were some quirks about that I didn’t like. Now that I’m in a more permanent space, I can finally take the time to build out a more permanent miter saw station that improves upon all the shortcomings of the previous.

It’s great having a cordless power-cleaner that you can use anywhere, but man, keeping them out of the way so you’re not tripping all over it or having them sprawled all over is a huge pain. I finally got tired of this and set out to just hang them up and out of the way

My power-tool and outdoor-tool collection spans a few different battery systems and I’ve either been tripping-over chargers or tumbling batteries over the years. With this shop, I specifically set aside some space dedicated to getting this under control.

There are two things that will almost certainly happen when you get a cyclone separator. First, you will be so happy when you see it working and do it’s thing and secondly, you’re going to knock the bucket over and curse. And shortly after, you’ll want to build a dust collection cart so that it never happens again.

I’ve had my original small parts storage setup since when I first started out building things and while it’s held up over the years, it could be better. Now that I have a bit more of a permanent setup, I’m revisiting this easy project to get everything organized.

Now that we have our own place, I can finally get rid of the wobbly IKEA table we were using as our dining table and build something personalized that we can use for years to come

We recently got a new king-size mattress to replace our old queen so this was a great opportunity to build a new floating frame, add cool new tech to it and address a few small grips with the original design!

Our shed was looking a bit bland so I built a couple of planter boxes to give it some contrast. This was a pretty easy project to knock out (with lots of room to simplify further!)

While Ford makes a fantastic bed divider, it’s lightweight and snaps in and our of place easily, it’s also expensive as hell so I figured why not make my own bed divider? Check out this build a 2x4 and plywood bed divider build!

My table saw has a hole on the right wing (many saws have this ‘feature’). Some users have taken to mounting a small router table in this gap, but I wanted a small work top to close off the cap and a small vise.