Tim bought a house with a three-car garage in 2019 with a specific plan: one bay for cars, two bays for a shop. The two shop bays were, when he moved in, empty concrete boxes with one fluorescent fixture each, no insulation, no electrical beyond a single 15-amp circuit in each bay, and the kind of cleanliness you’d expect from a garage that had held cars and nothing else for twenty years. He photographed them the day he moved in. He’s been photographing them annually since. Here’s the five-year evolution.
Year 1: Electrical upgrade – a 100-amp subpanel with eight circuits. Lighting – 16 LED shop lights in a grid pattern. These two upgrades alone transformed the functional quality of the space before a single machine was purchased. The bays went from dark and electrically limited to properly lit and ready for any shop equipment. Cost: about $1,800 with a hired electrician for the panel work and DIY LED installation.
Year 2: Workbench – a shop-built split-top Roubo that took three weekends. Dust collection – a 1.5-horsepower wall-mounted unit with a 4-inch main trunk. First machine – a SawStop contractor saw purchased new. The shop became functional for real furniture making in year two.
Year 3: French cleat walls – both shop bays covered from 30 inches to 7 feet on three sides. Storage built out over six months of evenings. Bandsaw added. The shop went from functional to organized.
Year 4: Jointer and planer. Dedicated finishing corner with a spray booth enclosure built from PVC pipe and plastic sheeting. The shop’s production capability expanded significantly. Year 5: Refinements – better clamp storage, a rolling assembly table, acoustic panels on the ceiling above the machines to reduce noise in the adjacent bay. The shop is, five years in, very close to what Tim imagined when he bought the house. The remaining items on the list are minor. Document your shop’s evolution and share it with us – annual photos of a shop in progress tell the most honest shop story there is.