We've been in this house three years now. When we first moved in I wrote about my detached garage, and the possibilities for using the space for hobby purposes. By September of 2022 I had settled in enough to set up a workbench there alongside the layout, still hopeful that the space could be used. But by September of 2023 I had determined the garage was not a suitable place for model trains, beyond storage - and even that's less than ideal. Since then I have said nothing more about it but work on the space has resumed so it is time for an update.
Let's start here:
Eagle eyed among you might see it says "Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter Here"...ha. No, it says "2 110V circ 20A w/switch leg". I braved the crawl space to find the junction box where the wiring comes from the garage into the house. I was rewarded with the solution to a mystery we have pondered since we moved in, a light switch with no apparent function. Now we know. A cable run in the garage that seemed to go nowhere and connect to nothing actually connects to that light switch in the den, and will allow a person to operate a garage light from the house. Neat. But I digress.
What led me under the house was the garage wiring, specifically that mystery cable. But the mystery cable wasn't a mystery until we started examining the garage wiring in more detail. That room needs additional outlets and better lighting. We (me, my son, and retired electrician Jack) were looking at options and plotting the current system. Turns out there's enough room on the circuit to add all the lighting I want and the outlets I'll need. Great. But I'm still burying the lead.
Why now? Why after all this time have I returned to the garage project? Because I have finally arrived at a place of...well, let's not say peace, but acceptance. The beginning of peace. I accept this space will make a decent shop for cutting, sanding, painting, plastering, etc.. I accept this will likely never be a space for a large, beautifully scenicked layout populated with craftsman structures and vintage rolling stock. I had suspected this would be the case last year but now I have come to terms with this idea.
That acceptance broke the log jam that had stymied any real progress on restructuring that area. Sure, I had tinkered around with some decluttering, having a successful yard sale, clearing out items that could live elsewhere, but with no clear picture of what the space would be beyond a cluttered storage unit with some tools and supplies strewn about. Accepting that this room will, for the foreseeable future, be primarily a shop for "messy" projects, with a well-organized storage space, and secondarily a home for the family bicycles, allowed me to make concrete choices to move the space in that direction.
One such choice is depicted below in a sequence of images:
Going, going, gone! These built-in shelves served their purpose but have now been deemed surplus to requirements. The window is likely original to the structure (1930s) and is a feature of the room, in my opinion. My workbench will live there beneath it, with storage racks on either side. The redwood planks that made up the shelves - former roof boards from the garage's original roof - will be repurposed. The outlet in the image above will be shifted closer to that window and the extension cord leading up to the ceiling will go away once new lighting is installed.
I'm excited about the possibilities for this space, a feeling I haven't had since I moved in. Now those possibilities aren't some distant dream of what might be, rather, they're a set of steps I can take right away to improve this room and build a shop that supports my hobbies and meets my family's needs. Look for future updates as the work continues. Thanks for reading.
