Ivans garage/mancave build

Some 'Hints and Tips' as you are still in the early stages.

Turn your lighting battens through 90 degrees and mount them on the underside of the floor recessed between the trusses. That way you won't break them when you manoeuvre large items. I've broken more than one light fitting arranged as yours currently are. I couldn't do that to my garage; it has the ceiling plaster-boarded, as there is a habitable room above. I rather wish the fluorescents would give up the ghost so I can justify replacing them with thin LED panels.

Floor space is Gold! But the wall above the top of the doors is above your head and of no value for manoeuvring. I have fitted shelving all around the garage at the height of the top of the doors. Originally sized for the random mismatched used storage boxes I had at the time. I subsequently bought new matching heavy-duty ones that are slightly longer.

LED 'strips' are cheap to buy and run. I fitted one as a bit of a joke and found it surprisingly useful. It is driven from a PIR equipped under cabinet light strip I bought from the Lidl clearance cage for about 50p - you can see it above the door and another on the ceiling. You could probably recover a PIR from an old dead cheap exterior floodlight. So it comes on 'automatically' as I enter the garage. Surprisingly useful when you are just popping in to collect/return something and your hands are full.

Consider making steel-framed shelves to fit the gable end walls in the loft space. Bolt them to the wall so it is taking most of the weight rather than the roof trusses which are not rated for that load. Store the heavy items on these shelves. If you 'must' store heavy/dense items on the ceiling joists do so as to close to the solid end wall as possible.

Well progress has been happening slowly. Mainly because the house and cars are taking up nearly all of my time as usual

So half the roof is up. I think I'd like to get the other half for September or the weather is going to make it a pain to do



I've bought a few things for the garage. Things I've always wanted but have never had room for.

1st up, a beautifully quiet air compressor. It's 90L so I think it should be man enough to cope with air sanders and spray guns. Something I'd like to add to my air tool collection is a rattle gun. Air powered ones seem a lot cheaper than electric. Just need to do some research before I buy.




There's also a retractable airline. I will mount a water trap and filter on the wall. The plan is for the air compressor to live just outside the door in its own little shed. That way, when I'm spraying I can close the garage door and the compressor won't be breathing any fumes. An extractor fan will go on the back wall.
That jet wash just out of shot Is also a recent acquisition and I've had an enormous amount of use out of it already. Just today its done the patio and paving around the house, blasted the grease and oil off the audi subframe and components and the same with a vice. Great bit of kit.


And a hydraulic press. They're cheap enough and a useful bit of kit for bushes, bearings, panel forming etc. Shame it's not man enough to do the bushes on the audi but I'm sure it's good enough to do everything else



Just a shame its so muggy and humid today. Truly horrible in there, hence all the jet-wash activities.



A very cheap, local purchase has been this vice. Its a Woden. I'll be rebuilding it



It's 6" across the Jaws with an anvil and is monstrous compared to my record vice.




Just about fits in the back of a MINI


While stripping down I've found out it would have been quick release but the mechanisms broken off and its been bodged to work without it. It's also got no jaw faces





I would like to see if I can reinstate the quick release either by sourcing original parts or making up my own mechanism

All I've done so far is stripped it down and jet washed the worst of the crud off. It'll need thoroughly degreasing, paint and rebuild.

Paint wise I think I'm going to go with old series land rover engine enamel as I think it's a pretty similar colour. Not sure what to do about jaw faces yet.

That's all for now

Hate to say this but 90 litres is not really enough to run sprayers/air tools off properly. It will work, but you will lose air pressure very fast with air tools - sprayer not so much but the motor will be running almost constantly if you run air tools.

I have a 150 litre tank on mine and that's barely enough for an air powered DA sander.

It will be usable, but will struggle a bit.

I'm always a little envious of garages this size, I've just got a standard 70s garage in a block, no power and a good 150yds from my house. It's little more than a glorified storage shed really. I did look at getting mains power into it but the cost would have been prohibitive.

Vice all greased and reassembled.

I still haven't got round to fixing the quick release and have locked the mechanism for now so that it functions without it. It needs it's own bench now.

Any update on this one Ivan?