Beth's Woodshop

One of the reasons we fell in love with this house was the extra double garage building it offered. The first owner was a builder, and when the plots were still being drawn up he managed to extend the property to allow space for the extra garage, which he then built around 2005. The extra building adds a little more privacy to our garden, and houses Beth's Woodshop below and a spare room above which houses my Playmobil collection.

Most Americans who want a woodshop or workshop, including our immediate neighbors and others in the subdivision, have to sacrifice their regular garage or some part of it. Our separate building keeps the noise and dust away from the main house, and frees up the regular garage to be... a garage.

With her usual premeditation and efficiency Beth started planning the shop layout from the day we moved in. Using cardboard from our packing she laid out the pattern of where machines would go for maximum access and ease of moving pieces from one machine to another. In the picture above there's just one machine in place, a lathe generously donated by our friend Mack, and driven home from Grand Junction in Colorado. 

Beth added new machines as they became affordable (there are always sales and offers going on), checking out garage sales as well for possible additions, until the woodshop is now fully equipped. There's a drill press, joiner, planer, scrollsaw, tablesaw, band saw, mitre saw, grinding wheel, air filter, dust collector, the big lathe and a mini lathe, router, a belt/disc sander, oscillating spindle sander, shop vac, and two workbenches, and some shelves for storing wood pieces and projects.

All this makes it much easier to put together a quick project. One of Beth's early ones was this bottle balancer, a bit of fun and a conversation piece for dinner parties.

Of more practical use to us (as we don't drink wine) is this cap stand, made entirely from scrap wood in four hours. Beth looked one up on the internet and designed this from the pictures.