Workshop Wall Going In (Basement)


After months of planning and thinking and posting about my eventual workshop, we finally have progress:  the wall that divides the rest of our basement with my shop is getting installed.  In the photo above, you can see the wall being framed and the steel door - an exterior door - installed.  On the right side of the photo - through the framing - you can see the existing stairs and banister coming down from the first floor.  In the middle of the room, you can see an existing door/wall that built out by our builder to contain the mechanical room.  They used a steel, exterior door on the mechanical room, so we replicated that with the door for my shop.  They're going to be so close, so it was important for them to match.

Right after the wall framing is done, drywall is going on the outside, but I'm going to leave the inside unfinished.  I'm still planning on cutting in a spot for a vent (see here for inspiration) and stuffing the joist cavities with insulation so we can keep the dust in the shop.  After that, I am thinking about a series of steps to get the shop ready including:

1.  Painting the inside of the shop.  Both the drywall you see above on the right side and the studs/backside of the drywall.   I know, I know.  Totally unnecessary, but I think it will look nicer and a little bit more finished.
2.  Painting the concrete foundation walls.  I picked up a few gallons of white concrete paint that creates a vapor barrier.  Same thing...totally unnecessary, I know.  But, I think it will both brighten the room (which has no windows) and make it feel just a little bit more finished.
3.  Install some shop lights.  Planning on using LEDs and hanging four (or maybe five) strips from the ceiling to brighten the room.
4.  I'm also planning on finishing the floor.  You can see the concrete floor in the photo above and it is bare concrete with some paint/drywall brick-a-brack/construction remnants on it.  My plan is to buy a garage floor epoxy kit and first etch the concrete, so it will adhere, then lay down the epoxy.  I need to measure the room, but I figure this is about a 250ish square foot space, so I'm hoping that maybe a one car garage kit can make the spread.
5.  Install a dust-collection system.  I have a mini cyclone system that works on a 5-gallon bucket.  But, thinking about running the ducting for a real system and have ports for my mitre saw, table saw, sanders, etc.
6.  Run power to a few select places.  When we built the house, I had the builder 'beef up' the electrical outlets on that side of the basement, so they could run some tools/compressors at the same time and not blow the power.  I'm planning on having power via some shop-level power strips mounted in a couple of places as well as either a ceiling/high-on-the-wall-mounted retractable power cords.
7.  Mount a retractable hose for the compressor.  Perhaps ceiling mounted, too.
8.  Before I get to the wall-mounted workbench, the first shop piece that I think I want to take on is my mitre saw table.  I started one before the shop project that you can see here.  But, I've since abandoned it after finding these 'ultimate mitre saw station' plans up on Wood Archivist.    That setup uses something like the Kreg Mitre gauge system.  But...let's be honest...I'm a long way away from pimping out the fence.  I still have to build the whole thing.    But, the mitre saw table seems like job one.  Then other shop implements.
9.  I have an existing really basic workbench.  I'll likely use that until I build the new wall-hanging one.  From there, I'll probably move the bench over to be a stand for various tabletop tools like my scroll saw, drill press and sanding tool(s).  But, that seems like another station that I'll eventually take on, but would think that's step 3 in the table-building.
10.  I'll also look to install either a slat wall or peg board or maybe even a series of magnetic strips like these from Rockler.

That seems like a pretty solid top ten list of tasks before I get my shop running.  There's tons more things that I'll want to take on including building out a cross-cut sled and outfeed table for my table saw, some task-oriented lighting and of course, plenty of storage (for tools, material, etc).  Let's revisit this list later this year and see what kind of progress I've made.  Between the planter boxes and all the work I have to do outside in the garden/yard this Summer, I'm expecting that my shop progress is going to be slow.  But, this post, and this list seem like a good benchmark to revisit come the fall.

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