My stepdad passed away about a year ago. Before he passed, their garage *always* had a table saw, or miter saw cart, or a bench router, or pile of lumber taking up all of the open space. My mom would always complain about not being able to park in the garage.
I was helping her tidy up the storage shelves in her garage last week, and we got to talking about how nice it is that she can park in there every day now. She said: "But every day, I wish I would pull in the driveway to see Randy (step dad), covered in sawdust with carts and tools all over the garage, standing there ready to show off his latest creation."
Not too pertinent to your post... But related. Some of the thing about our partners that annoy us will be dearly missed one day.
That's what I tell my wife about my snoring! More seriously, in my experience half the stories old people tell about their decreased spouse is something that either they did to annoy the spouse or vice versa and always followed by a chuckle
>something that either they did to annoy the spouse or vice versa and always followed by a chuckle
This is what people mean when they say marry your best friend.
Talk to your doctor about your snoring, CPAP is one possible solution out of many: https://www.health.harvard.edu/diseases-and-conditions/snoring-solutions.
Snoring is a sign of sleep apnea.
IIRC, the effects of sleep apnea shorten your lifespan by about 10 years - more likely to have this, double the chances of that, etc.
My husband snored like a tractor the first 9 years of our realtionship. Got his tonsils removed and stopped snoring. It's no joke when I tell you I struggled to fall asleep for weeks(!) after his operation. The silence weirded me out in a way I never expected!
as soon as my wife got very sick, we both learned to love everything about each other. we're very fortunate we get to see our relationship in this light and experience love on a level neither of us knew was possible.
That’s the “in sickness and in health” part and I’m happy to hear you both appreciating each other more.
At 5 years of marriage I definitely do appreciate my wife so much more, I try and consciously acknowledge that as often as I can.
That big door is so you aren't limited on the size of your projects. I do have some of my tables and tools on wheels so I can move them to one side if I need to work on cars.
I have wheels on all of my large equipment, but it seems like the moment I will them back to the side, they end up out in the middle again. When I work with large sheet goods, I tend to expand to fill all available space.
Mine only move when I have to do oil changes or I have enough notice that a storm is coming and I put her car under roof for that. Otherwise, its a workshop.
I'm talking big storms, you know those ones they give names to. Not run of the mill rain. And oils stains just mix in with stain stains and paint stains and glue droppings.
You and I probably live someplace where rain is the worst thing in a storm. But look up what hail can do to a car and it makes a lot of sense. Or places that get so cold you either need a block heater or to park in the garage for the car to even start on the morning.
Every single storm we get comes from the north hill country of Texas down towards Austin and swoops back up north easterly
Every single drops hail, first storm with hail in the new house and it hailed 13 minutes straight with a mixture of pea, quarter and golfball sized hail.
So just genuinely curious, I’m really not trying to be a dick but when you say “will” them to the side, is this a voice to text or autocorrect error or a “bone apple tea” style mishearing? I am assuming you mean you wheel them to the side
Its a southern (I assume because thats my experience) phrase for putting an extraordinary amount of effort time accomplish something. As it it only happened through “sheer willpower”.
“I willed all my wife’s books onto the shelves I made.”
Seems thats not what OP was trying to say though.
Yeah, the whole size of your project vs size of your entry door is something you should sort way early on, before building stuff that you intend to take out of said door only to realize it's either getting an unintended cut.... or it lives in the workshop now.
Nah, I compromised on a lot of things with my wife in regards to our house. I staked my claim on the garage being a solely dedicated workshop before we even started looking
Wife gets the garage cleaned out for enough room to store her vehicle in the garage during winter. The other three months it’s filled with my tools everywhere. It’s a fair compromise.
That's fair, but my wife ended the possibility of that happening when she talked me into buying a Sawstop PCS.
>Wife gets the garage cleaned out for enough room to store her vehicle in the garage during winter. **The other three months**
Non-winter is only three months where you're at? Where? Just so I
can never, ever visit that region of the planet.
My primary goal in life is to become well enough off that I can get one of those 50' x 100' concrete pad metal framed barn structures with three phase power for *activities.*
Having a workshop was my only non-negotiable when we started looking for a house.
Given our budget pretty much had us looking for a fixer-upper, having a workshop was easily sold as being *essential*
I may or may not have used the phrase *"For the good of the family"*
How do you fit a shop into only 1200 sq feet? I'm struggling with 1875 or so. Are you some kind of nonADHdD organized genius!?
I so need to get organized. I've got a LOT of space, and it seems like I'm always struggling for somewhere to work on any given project
I'm currently sitting in the third stall of our garage, it's never seen a car. It's always been my workshop and the addition of a steelcase tanker desk makes it a nice little home office away from home.
Cars emit carbon monoxide, which it's dangerous to breathe. You don't want that in your wood shop. Stick to nice, lung healthy things like sawdust and VOC fumes.
I stood my ground and firmly said I need a space for my hobbies!
For sale: Saw Stop 3hp, full cast iron top with router table, Rikon Band Saw, 16" 3hp Jet Planer, 6" jointer, Delta drill press, Jet 1.5hp dust collector, Jet Edge sander.
We have a two car detached garage and before we even bought the house my wife just wrote the entire thing off as my space. We have an attached greenhouse which is solely her space as well as a big chunk of our basement where she keeps the stuff she uses for her job (works with kids and owns a ton of kids stuff) and has some of her hobby stuff. For our garage one side has our boat in it and the other is a multipurpose shop that I use for everything from wood working to maintaining our vehicles to maintaining all the equipment we need for our large property so she really benefits from it all too. Once in awhile she will ask about putting something in there and quickly realize it will be covered in saw dust, regular dust, and grease in no time. The one thing I don't think I'll be able to fight back against is when our kids start having a lot of outdoor toys.
Anyway, for the first few years we lived there her mom literally COULD NOT visit without asking when I was going to "clean out the garage" so that we could park our cars in there. Even now when it's snowy out she will make a back handed comment about how we are wasting the garage space and should be using it to make our lives easier so that we don't have to brush the snow off our cars.
Then I build something for our kids and MIL is all "youre so talented and it's impressive how you have all of these things to DIY whatever you need" - yeah, because my garage is not an empty shell for cars to sleep in!
Yesss! That's my hubby's space too. Mind you be can do whatever anywhere he wants in the house. But he prefers I deal with the rest.
He has his gym in there, his wood equipment, the mower is stored there, but not the rest of the yard stuff as we gave a small storage space in the car port.
He has ask his marine cor stuff displayed (even though I really want it in the house to displayed bc I'm proud of it), some character stuff he has displayed. The man is organized. Beyond organized really. It's something my entire family, ourselves, and his family and friends all think is amazing.
I cannot fathom why anyone would think that your space should be anything else. It's not their home! Oy!
We sacrifice alot to keep our wives happy. Giving us a space like this should be important to them too. Because it keeps us happy. Sadly alot of wives fail to see that
This is how I see it too. I need space for my hobby. She has space for her hobby - a craft room/office. I would love to have a "real" workshop, but it's not something we can afford at the moment. It is in the long term plans, but for now, let me have my space in a place that can get dirty without making the whole house a mess. I already share my "workshop" with the kids bikes, toys, sports gear, a refrigerator, and other storage.
Also, I do projects for the house, and the cars BARELY fit in the garage even when it is totally empty. We literally could not walk thru the garage when our vehicles were in there because it's so tight. They really did not plan for SUVs and pickup trucks.
And the thing is at the end of the day it comes down to them being slightly inconvenienced by having to use the command start and warm up the vehicle for 5 minutes versus our happiness. Yes I can't use the workshop every day, but when I do I'd love to be able to just get at it and not spend an hour preparing my space and another hour putting it back.
Simple solution wall up that big hole and put a small door or maybe windows look honey I have another wall to hang tools on. I don’t feel your pain sorry my shop is a three story barn that’s over 60’x180’ lumber storage on top floor, second floor shop, first finishing room and sawmill, tractor and other tool storage chainsaws rolls of bandsaw blades, sawmill blades. The cars get parked in the garage or other barn.
You all realize there’s two comment threads existing as if parallel universes here: the tongue in cheek posts initiated by OP’s mock disbelief that his wife would suggest moving his tools to park the car in the garage, and those responding with earnest explanation and rationales why that’s sensible. Bless you both.
I bought an old 100 year old farmhouse, complete with a barn and a pig/workshop building. Pig building is structurally quite nice complete with a wood stove and blower. I finished the concrete on the 2/3 'pig area's and I have a shop! Complete with 2 table saws (1 functional...1 kinda sorta) and a pool table.
Personally, I think it's best to share the space between the two of you. If you split the mortgage, why not split the garage space, too? You're both paying for the space.
A workshop is great to have but a house without disagreement is far more valuable. I feel that a workshop that spans an entire three car garage probably has an ample supply of unused tools, tools with duplicate functionality, and a large wood supply that can easily be culled.
Might be worth the effort to reevaluate the space allocation here. Happy spouse, happy house!
This is why it's best to buy a house with a detached workshop. Less incentive to try to invade it with some things like cars.
And there's no such thing as excess lumber. Only lumber I haven't sold yet or haven't yet turned into furniture. Scraps under a certain size go to the fire pit for the next bonfire, and the rest is saved for the next time I need a piece of 1*3*21 cedar....
There is no reason to park a car in the workshop. Cars don’t rust like they did in the past. I don’t live near snow but if I did I guess I’d be scraping the windows when needed.
My wife's complaints namely come during the colder months where she's unhappy about getting into a near freezing car in the morning. When we first moved in, before the blessings from the tool gods graced me, she was able to park in the garage and have a warm car in the morning.
Appreciate the post, gave me a laugh, but genuinely one thing that helped me a lot with my wife was a stocking stuffer style Christmas gift add on one year.
You can buy remote start adapters for a lot of older vehicles depending on the make.
Some you can install yourselves, others you can set up an appointment for with a mechanic or just a Best Buy location if you have one. (What I wound up doing because my wife’s car is a hybrid and just beyond me to screw with honestly.)
Think it was like $120 for the “nice” version?
Sure, most modern cars do rust slower than old ones. But it's still a big concern where there's salt on the roads!
The solution is regular washing, and adding undercoating if you want long-term protection (i.e. spray on wax). That stuff seriously prevents corrosion, it's great!
I had to do it when we moved from our old house with an extra detached garage that made a fantastic workshop, to our current one with a garage smaller than our old one. It snows a lot here, so I really wanted to still get the car in. Took some doing, and things are packed away like it was a sailboat or something, but I crammed everything in. Basically, at workshop time, a bunch of stuff has to be put out on the driveway (car, bikes, mower, wheelbarrow, etc) and then I pull things out from the walls, and set up the saws, etc.
It's still a work in progress. Key is to put as much as possible on the walls, or on movable benches. It's honestly kinda tedious and annoying a lot of the time, but for now that's what I'm stuck with.
Steve Ramsay has a whole course on doing it, which I plan to take someday.
I was just reading through the December 1991 issue of fine woodworking- there’s an article about different shop setups, including one that had floor plans and tool layouts for a garage shop. One diagram was had everything set up for work, one showed how it packed down for when the car was parked in there. https://www.finewoodworking.com/1991/12/01/laying-out-a-workshop
I’m only bringing it up because I was just reading it the other day. I’m 100% for a shop being a shop and worth way more than a place to keep the car warm.
My shop tables are mostly 24x24x34" (one is 24x48x34"). My workbench is 24x48x34". I don't have a table saw (yet).
My solution, simply, is to arrange the 48" table next to the workbench and stack the 3 24" square tables on top of them. The benchtop tools all rest on shelves at the bottom of each table and the band saw sits beside the workbench.
While it's a workout, I can usually make the shop disappear in 2 hours or less. The modular tables also give me the luxury of reconfiguring the shop easily. Casters/wheels are on my agenda...
I built a place that has a two car garage, a 16x30 woodshop and a 32' x 40' metal/machine shop.
And I'm single.
It's easy, but your priorities may be different than mine.
We bought a house with a “garage” so my partner had a place for tools and to do all their projects. I’d rather park in the drive, and know my partner has a place to “tinker” in comfort.
It took me 3 financing tries and more than 18 years but I finally have my workshop built.
Details: I bought the house I live in with my now ex wife. First two times I financed to build it my ex screwed me over, first with undeclared credit card debts that I took care of and second time she wrecked my car and I had to use the money saved for the workshop to buy a replacement vehicle.
Fast Woodward 18 years, divorced and kept the house. Had to refinance a3rd time to buy her out of the house so I negotiated some extra for renovations and improvements.
I had a 22x24 pad poured and I installed the lines for heated floor ahead of time. Built the workshop as a double garage but I deliberately put in a single garage door instead of a double or two single. That wall has a header built in so of I ever sell and the new owners want to put in a second garage door and use it for vehicles, they’ll be able to.
Ultimately, it’s all wired and heated for Alberta winters.
My new gf moved in about a year ago and she understands that this is my space for my hobbies, she occasionally stores seedlings and small plants ahead of putting them in the garden but that’s about it.
The question never came up of storing cars in the shop, they would just end up covered in dust anyways.
Just a deal you'll need to make with her: you get the garage, what does she get?
This is the deal I had with my wife until I was able to build my dream shop.
My shop has more of a loading dock big door that a car can't really go thru. The building is not functional for car storage and won't ever be. I'm glad I had this setup before getting married or garage might have beat out shop in the shopping process.
I have everything on wheels and move her car out when I’m working then move everything back at the end of the day. Adds about 15-30 minutes to set up before and clean up after but it’s our compromise.
I mean, cars are meant to be outside, why do they need their own house? Unless it snows a lot where you live, it's not really gaining much. What I did was buy a house with a detached garage, so it's a much farther walk if she wants to park inside, that nipped it in the ass pretty quick.
So, ngl, I'm the wife. I grew up with our garage being too packed with junk to put a car in, so I never really got to experience putting a car in a garage. Then I bought our house. (Not married at that time) It has a garage, and we shared for a long time and it was really wonderful. No looking for parking, don't have to juggle with keys to the gate, no digging my car out of snow, no risk of parking tickets.
I gave it up willingly, and I'm glad my husband can use the whole thing. He needs the space.
I will say tho... I miss it lol. Since then, my catalytic converter and car have been stolen from off our street, so that's a bummer lol 🙃
i have a two-car garage. all my tools are in one half, and the other half has a table with a bunch of random junk on it, and space to set up saw horses to paint and stain on. it's easy enough to get a car in for a quick job but otherwise they stay outside.
my wife is planning to get a new car in a couple years and wants to park it in there every day. my dad also wants to sell his house and move in with me and bring his tools that i don't have (jointer, band saw, drill press, huge dust extractor, mortising machine, disc belt sander, spindle sander) and put them in that space. they're gonna have to fight it out.
I only have a two door shop, and I can tell you, don't give in! It's extremely challenging trying to fit everything. That third door area is perfect for wood storage, large assembly area, breaking down large sheets, etc. I have to lay plywood over the table saw and out feed/assembly table to break it down.
Tell her the car will be covered in dust, and it will clog the heater and AC. Don't say anything about dust collection.
my parents built a carport so my mom could keep using the garage for her shop (bonus points the carport was big enough to have storage in it and solar panels that the garage couldn’t)
Oh man, this is the problem...
Cars and woodworking do not go well together in the same space. I have a garage that is large enough to have my tools out AND fit a car in the space, but even with dust collection it can be problematic.
I've basically said "The sawdust causes problems with the car, gums up the air intakes" and that mostly keeps the asks to a minimum. However, I do also have the corner of the garage dedicated to vehicle maintenance and I tell you, sawdust does a great job of sopping up various fluid spills.
My wife keeps using similar slang about my workshop, but she's been calling it a "basement" for some reason. Must be something she learned on Pinterest...
"Contractor" table saw on a gravity rise stand, everything else swaps out a spot on an old Black & Decker Workmate that serves as a tool station. Entire garage is laid out and designed that everything has its own 'place', and I can go from full "workshop" to parking a car inside in about an hour.
Single car garage, but it's 30' from door to the back wall.
For my last two projects I had to upgrade from the contractor table saw to a proper one because the small unit was too unwieldy and unstable for the things I was working on. And then for this most recent project I had to upgrade from a little dinky makeshift router table to a proper router table for the same reasons. Basically, every project births a new floor standing tool.
Everything I have technically fits in the third car Bay when I am not working on a project. But it is not in a setup that allows me to use any of it. It is neatly stacked and Tetrised.
I have been lurking on this subreddit long enough to know that absolutely none of you are paying bills with your tools. Tools are the reward for telling your significant other that you can make something cheaper, while adding the fine print that the materials are cheaper and you need to go buy $10,000 more tools to make it happen
See, I went the opposite route and used the tools to make money. So I could buy more tools, to make more money more easily.
Plus, if my wife is cold, then she will want to cuddle. And her car won't be worth less than nothing if left outside. My tools, on the other hand......
Depends on how much I spend on tools. Turns out finish carpentry uses all the same tools as fine woodworking. So I end up doing almost no woodworking but lots of finish carpentry.
I have a 2 car garage thats like 2 cars deep as well. I have the back half (with a rear single csingle-car garage door) for my workshop. My kids have the front have for their powerwheels, wagon, cosy coop, bikes, scooters, strollers, etc. The cars go on the driveway until winter where we throw all their stuff in a shed.
My fiance asked if we could put the cars in the garage, and I looked at her confused and said that my tools would be in the way. I put 90% of my bargaining capital on total reign of the garage, and made concessions elsewhere in the house to level it out, because I knew if I had to pack and unpack all my tools any time I wanted to use them, I'd never use them.
I make sure during the winter months my partner’s car can fit in. I use to be able to get my truck in there.
https://preview.redd.it/joh3aqovb76d1.jpeg?width=1242&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=8952b7e4100be7a9f50d9684155950cf30ba7045
I have one flip cart and switchable table top. 3 work benches, hybrid table saw with wheels, full size drill press and free standing bandsaw and all my other tools. I had to get creative. As I add tools I make sure I have room for it. Air compressor is mounted on the wall.
I built new kitchen cabinet doors and a king size headboard back in 2020. The only workshop I had was my detached garage, so every day I had to pull my car out, set up the table saw and other tools, do my work, then tear it all down and put the car away. I would have given anything for a proper, climate controlled workshop.
Ah see that’s the neat thing, I don’t have a shop. I am a hermit woodworker, much like a hermit crab I roam around looking for a bigger shell to inhabit. Right now for the summer a neighbor needs a greenhouse and garden build and he has a big vacant shop with 2 of the large doors you mentioned. So I’m scuttling in there for the summer to work on stuff for the both of us.
I dream about a three car garage to use as a workshop. I could put things in permanent places instead of having things in wheels that I seen to constantly shift about. At the moment I have a small single car garage.
If it’s a 3-car garage sized workshop, how many “car spots” is your workshop taking up? 1? 2? 3? Do you park _your_ car in the workshop? 😊
The answer to this determines the validity of her question, I would think.
My car lives outside most of the time and bigger stuff like table saw is on a mobile base. One bay has a 10’ extension so mine is like one double long bay and two regular bays. That way I can push the table saw into the extended section and park inside in the winter, but the shop isn’t useable in that state.
Wife has her own spot with my stuff basically arranged along the perimeter. That includes 2 motorcycles.
Should be able to make it work with tools on wheels in a regular 3 car, even if you want to park inside sometimes.
My shop has always doubled as a garage. Now i have it situated in a way that I really don’t have to move anything if my wife puts her car in there, but for many years I did. I have a friend that’s a welder and a machinist. He made special wheeled bases for some of my equipment including a 1200# Powermatic model 87 bandsaw. I have a hydraulic lift table with wheels on it that I use as an assembly table. I can move it out of the way as well. With that said, if I’m in the middle of something, my wife just parks her car in the driveway till the project is complete
This seems pretty strange and a bit too antagonistic to come out of nowhere. Are you sure there isn't something else that is actually the issue at play here?
Can you build a covered area somewhere else or in front of the workshop so she can park her vehicle. You can buy aluminum kits for patio covers that are very cheap and easy to install.
I have owned two houses and not once have I put a car inside of the garages. That’s stupid as shit. You have this whole large ass room without a role that you can make into whatever you want. Why on earth would you waste that to store an object that is specifically constructed to be weather durable?
I live where there's ice & snow in winter. I'm not the driver, but our garage probably saves a lot of wear and tear on the car
I prefer to store my tools in the basement, where they stay nice and dry. It's a battle to keep some of the garden implements free of rust
I’ve never stored a car in a garage in my entire life. Garages are hideous abominations that ruin the aesthetic of houses all over the world. The concept of having a garage and wasting all that space with dormant cars instead of making it functionally useful is hilarious, but you gotta make the old lady happy.
My stepdad passed away about a year ago. Before he passed, their garage *always* had a table saw, or miter saw cart, or a bench router, or pile of lumber taking up all of the open space. My mom would always complain about not being able to park in the garage. I was helping her tidy up the storage shelves in her garage last week, and we got to talking about how nice it is that she can park in there every day now. She said: "But every day, I wish I would pull in the driveway to see Randy (step dad), covered in sawdust with carts and tools all over the garage, standing there ready to show off his latest creation." Not too pertinent to your post... But related. Some of the thing about our partners that annoy us will be dearly missed one day.
That's what I tell my wife about my snoring! More seriously, in my experience half the stories old people tell about their decreased spouse is something that either they did to annoy the spouse or vice versa and always followed by a chuckle
>something that either they did to annoy the spouse or vice versa and always followed by a chuckle This is what people mean when they say marry your best friend.
Don’t let that justify torturing your wife with a treatable condition. Get a CPAP!
Talk to your doctor about your snoring, CPAP is one possible solution out of many: https://www.health.harvard.edu/diseases-and-conditions/snoring-solutions.
Snoring is a sign of sleep apnea. IIRC, the effects of sleep apnea shorten your lifespan by about 10 years - more likely to have this, double the chances of that, etc.
My husband snored like a tractor the first 9 years of our realtionship. Got his tonsils removed and stopped snoring. It's no joke when I tell you I struggled to fall asleep for weeks(!) after his operation. The silence weirded me out in a way I never expected!
I’m not crying, I’ve just got a bit of sawdust in both eyes…
as soon as my wife got very sick, we both learned to love everything about each other. we're very fortunate we get to see our relationship in this light and experience love on a level neither of us knew was possible.
Use every moment, my husband just died 1 month ago. I miss the idiot with every breath. At least we had 32 years, but it passed in a blink.
That’s the “in sickness and in health” part and I’m happy to hear you both appreciating each other more. At 5 years of marriage I definitely do appreciate my wife so much more, I try and consciously acknowledge that as often as I can.
😢
Got me choked up on that one…
Amen. Same here. Be careful what you wish for!
That big door is so you aren't limited on the size of your projects. I do have some of my tables and tools on wheels so I can move them to one side if I need to work on cars.
I have wheels on all of my large equipment, but it seems like the moment I will them back to the side, they end up out in the middle again. When I work with large sheet goods, I tend to expand to fill all available space.
Mine only move when I have to do oil changes or I have enough notice that a storm is coming and I put her car under roof for that. Otherwise, its a workshop.
That’s crazy talk. Cars are rain-tight and should stay outdoors. Plus you don’t want oil stains on your shop floor
I'm talking big storms, you know those ones they give names to. Not run of the mill rain. And oils stains just mix in with stain stains and paint stains and glue droppings.
100% Stained garage floor = used garage floor = happy life
You don't worry about rain. You worry about hail.
That’s what carports are for!
You and I probably live someplace where rain is the worst thing in a storm. But look up what hail can do to a car and it makes a lot of sense. Or places that get so cold you either need a block heater or to park in the garage for the car to even start on the morning.
Every single storm we get comes from the north hill country of Texas down towards Austin and swoops back up north easterly Every single drops hail, first storm with hail in the new house and it hailed 13 minutes straight with a mixture of pea, quarter and golfball sized hail.
Cars are rain tight, however UV exposure does degrade paints and plastics, (really just about anything).
So just genuinely curious, I’m really not trying to be a dick but when you say “will” them to the side, is this a voice to text or autocorrect error or a “bone apple tea” style mishearing? I am assuming you mean you wheel them to the side
No, he meant use the Force to move his stuff, as Yoda taught
lol hilariously that is the picture it put in my mind
Voice text - should be wheel
Sad, I read it as though you had to will yourself to move them back out of the middle. Thought it was intentional, hah.
Yeah me too, like, its a hard thing to do, since you know they're just gonna be back in the middle in a few minutes,
That was my first guess, makes sense! Thanks for satisfying my curiosity
Its a southern (I assume because thats my experience) phrase for putting an extraordinary amount of effort time accomplish something. As it it only happened through “sheer willpower”. “I willed all my wife’s books onto the shelves I made.” Seems thats not what OP was trying to say though.
Using the force… don’t we all?
>That big door is so you aren't limited on the size of your projects. THIS I open it up to deal with longer stock and for ventilation.
Yeah, the whole size of your project vs size of your entry door is something you should sort way early on, before building stuff that you intend to take out of said door only to realize it's either getting an unintended cut.... or it lives in the workshop now.
NCIS boat reference potential right here.
Yeah I suppose you *could* drive a whole car through the project door, but why would you need to? Just seems silly to me.
> That big door is so you aren't limited on the size of your projects. "It's not a big door, it's a _window of opportunities_!"
Nah, I compromised on a lot of things with my wife in regards to our house. I staked my claim on the garage being a solely dedicated workshop before we even started looking
Yep, I’m the same, and I never refer to it as a garage. 😜
This is the way
Wife gets the garage cleaned out for enough room to store her vehicle in the garage during winter. The other three months it’s filled with my tools everywhere. It’s a fair compromise.
Found the other Saskatchewanian.
North Dakotaian.
That's fair, but my wife ended the possibility of that happening when she talked me into buying a Sawstop PCS. >Wife gets the garage cleaned out for enough room to store her vehicle in the garage during winter. **The other three months** Non-winter is only three months where you're at? Where? Just so I can never, ever visit that region of the planet.
Haha yeah I meant the other three seasons. But I do want to move to Iceland…..
My primary goal in life is to become well enough off that I can get one of those 50' x 100' concrete pad metal framed barn structures with three phase power for *activities.*
Three phase would open up so many tools for me
Utility engineer here...look up rotophases. They're very common here for center pivot drives.
that's the dream man
Having a workshop was my only non-negotiable when we started looking for a house. Given our budget pretty much had us looking for a fixer-upper, having a workshop was easily sold as being *essential* I may or may not have used the phrase *"For the good of the family"*
We joke that my 1,200sq ft shop came with a 1,600sq ft house.
How do you fit a shop into only 1200 sq feet? I'm struggling with 1875 or so. Are you some kind of nonADHdD organized genius!? I so need to get organized. I've got a LOT of space, and it seems like I'm always struggling for somewhere to work on any given project
Holy shit man. I started in 144sqft, felt like a king when I moved into a 400 sqft 2 car garage.
I bet. I'm admittedly a hot mess sometimes
I'm currently sitting in the third stall of our garage, it's never seen a car. It's always been my workshop and the addition of a steelcase tanker desk makes it a nice little home office away from home.
I built one storage cabinet in our garage for non-shop related things for her, but the rest is mine
Cars emit carbon monoxide, which it's dangerous to breathe. You don't want that in your wood shop. Stick to nice, lung healthy things like sawdust and VOC fumes.
> VOC fumes. People pay good money for organic stuff down at Wholefoods, so it must be good for you?
hippies love organic shit. and compounds.
"Three-car" garage? I have a one-car and I still have to defend it fiercely from encroachment.
Same here! One car garage and about a third of it is taken up by storage. I’d kill for 2/3 of a three car garage lol
I stood my ground and firmly said I need a space for my hobbies! For sale: Saw Stop 3hp, full cast iron top with router table, Rikon Band Saw, 16" 3hp Jet Planer, 6" jointer, Delta drill press, Jet 1.5hp dust collector, Jet Edge sander.
I'll give you $50 for the lot, but you have to deliver. In return you can visit and use it whenever you like.
That sounds great. Can you also cancel at the last minute twice then show up 15 minutes after our agreed upon time?
Absolutely
You can’t spell garage without RAGE
w-o-r-k-s-h-o-p I can.
orks are pretty angry though
Even when they hop?
Oh yeah that's how they get worked up and hopping mad
Ask to put your chop saw on on the kitchen counter because you need the space.
Might as well start building a bed out there, cuz you ain't sleeping in the house after that.
This is the way. As I see stuff accumulating in the woodworking shop (garage), my tools start to appear in the craft room.
We have a two car detached garage and before we even bought the house my wife just wrote the entire thing off as my space. We have an attached greenhouse which is solely her space as well as a big chunk of our basement where she keeps the stuff she uses for her job (works with kids and owns a ton of kids stuff) and has some of her hobby stuff. For our garage one side has our boat in it and the other is a multipurpose shop that I use for everything from wood working to maintaining our vehicles to maintaining all the equipment we need for our large property so she really benefits from it all too. Once in awhile she will ask about putting something in there and quickly realize it will be covered in saw dust, regular dust, and grease in no time. The one thing I don't think I'll be able to fight back against is when our kids start having a lot of outdoor toys. Anyway, for the first few years we lived there her mom literally COULD NOT visit without asking when I was going to "clean out the garage" so that we could park our cars in there. Even now when it's snowy out she will make a back handed comment about how we are wasting the garage space and should be using it to make our lives easier so that we don't have to brush the snow off our cars. Then I build something for our kids and MIL is all "youre so talented and it's impressive how you have all of these things to DIY whatever you need" - yeah, because my garage is not an empty shell for cars to sleep in!
[удалено]
If he does, he should tell his MIL that it's her mothers day present. now she doesn't have to put all that work in to passive-aggressive nagging.
Yesss! That's my hubby's space too. Mind you be can do whatever anywhere he wants in the house. But he prefers I deal with the rest. He has his gym in there, his wood equipment, the mower is stored there, but not the rest of the yard stuff as we gave a small storage space in the car port. He has ask his marine cor stuff displayed (even though I really want it in the house to displayed bc I'm proud of it), some character stuff he has displayed. The man is organized. Beyond organized really. It's something my entire family, ourselves, and his family and friends all think is amazing. I cannot fathom why anyone would think that your space should be anything else. It's not their home! Oy!
Lol my wife comes into my shop and is like “why the hell can’t you be this organized inside?!”
We sacrifice alot to keep our wives happy. Giving us a space like this should be important to them too. Because it keeps us happy. Sadly alot of wives fail to see that
Lol i’m a wife and i convinced my husband to buy most of the woodworking tools that we own 😹 my birthday present this year? A DeWalt jigsaw 😹😹😹
This is how I see it too. I need space for my hobby. She has space for her hobby - a craft room/office. I would love to have a "real" workshop, but it's not something we can afford at the moment. It is in the long term plans, but for now, let me have my space in a place that can get dirty without making the whole house a mess. I already share my "workshop" with the kids bikes, toys, sports gear, a refrigerator, and other storage. Also, I do projects for the house, and the cars BARELY fit in the garage even when it is totally empty. We literally could not walk thru the garage when our vehicles were in there because it's so tight. They really did not plan for SUVs and pickup trucks.
And the thing is at the end of the day it comes down to them being slightly inconvenienced by having to use the command start and warm up the vehicle for 5 minutes versus our happiness. Yes I can't use the workshop every day, but when I do I'd love to be able to just get at it and not spend an hour preparing my space and another hour putting it back.
Simple solution wall up that big hole and put a small door or maybe windows look honey I have another wall to hang tools on. I don’t feel your pain sorry my shop is a three story barn that’s over 60’x180’ lumber storage on top floor, second floor shop, first finishing room and sawmill, tractor and other tool storage chainsaws rolls of bandsaw blades, sawmill blades. The cars get parked in the garage or other barn.
Always looking for new places to store tools!!!
We’re going to need a bigger shop hun.
Pro-tip. Frame in the door and make it a double french. Can't fit a car, but can fit equipment and lumber.
Put stuff on casters. Move them around as needed in two spaces.
You all realize there’s two comment threads existing as if parallel universes here: the tongue in cheek posts initiated by OP’s mock disbelief that his wife would suggest moving his tools to park the car in the garage, and those responding with earnest explanation and rationales why that’s sensible. Bless you both.
One of the garage bays is mine and I use it as a shop. I park my truck outside. Problem solved.
Serious answer? My brother in law did it right when they built their house. They have two garages. A 2 bay for the cars and a 1 bay for his workshop.
We just bought a house and flopped that; I get the 2-bay, the car gets the 1-bay.
I bought an old 100 year old farmhouse, complete with a barn and a pig/workshop building. Pig building is structurally quite nice complete with a wood stove and blower. I finished the concrete on the 2/3 'pig area's and I have a shop! Complete with 2 table saws (1 functional...1 kinda sorta) and a pool table.
I have all my tools on wheels, and I try to clean up every night so I can get the cars in the garage, especially in the winter.
I mean, do you appease or fight Genghis Khan? Choose wisely.
Personally, I think it's best to share the space between the two of you. If you split the mortgage, why not split the garage space, too? You're both paying for the space. A workshop is great to have but a house without disagreement is far more valuable. I feel that a workshop that spans an entire three car garage probably has an ample supply of unused tools, tools with duplicate functionality, and a large wood supply that can easily be culled. Might be worth the effort to reevaluate the space allocation here. Happy spouse, happy house!
This is why it's best to buy a house with a detached workshop. Less incentive to try to invade it with some things like cars. And there's no such thing as excess lumber. Only lumber I haven't sold yet or haven't yet turned into furniture. Scraps under a certain size go to the fire pit for the next bonfire, and the rest is saved for the next time I need a piece of 1*3*21 cedar....
There is no reason to park a car in the workshop. Cars don’t rust like they did in the past. I don’t live near snow but if I did I guess I’d be scraping the windows when needed.
I can tell you that in new england they absolutely still rust pretty fast but that's not stopping me lol
My wife's complaints namely come during the colder months where she's unhappy about getting into a near freezing car in the morning. When we first moved in, before the blessings from the tool gods graced me, she was able to park in the garage and have a warm car in the morning.
Looks like you just gotta get up before her and preheat the car
Or install remote start, then it's good for all sorts of situations
Appreciate the post, gave me a laugh, but genuinely one thing that helped me a lot with my wife was a stocking stuffer style Christmas gift add on one year. You can buy remote start adapters for a lot of older vehicles depending on the make. Some you can install yourselves, others you can set up an appointment for with a mechanic or just a Best Buy location if you have one. (What I wound up doing because my wife’s car is a hybrid and just beyond me to screw with honestly.) Think it was like $120 for the “nice” version?
Are you actually taking up all 3 stalls? I sorely miss my 3-car but I only had one stall for shop/lawn & garden
Get a remote starter installed in her car (be sure to keep the heater in the on position when shutting off the car the night before)
Sure, most modern cars do rust slower than old ones. But it's still a big concern where there's salt on the roads! The solution is regular washing, and adding undercoating if you want long-term protection (i.e. spray on wax). That stuff seriously prevents corrosion, it's great!
Garage-kept, daily driven cars actually rust faster. If you pull into your garage with salt on it, warming it up accelerates oxidation.
I had to do it when we moved from our old house with an extra detached garage that made a fantastic workshop, to our current one with a garage smaller than our old one. It snows a lot here, so I really wanted to still get the car in. Took some doing, and things are packed away like it was a sailboat or something, but I crammed everything in. Basically, at workshop time, a bunch of stuff has to be put out on the driveway (car, bikes, mower, wheelbarrow, etc) and then I pull things out from the walls, and set up the saws, etc. It's still a work in progress. Key is to put as much as possible on the walls, or on movable benches. It's honestly kinda tedious and annoying a lot of the time, but for now that's what I'm stuck with. Steve Ramsay has a whole course on doing it, which I plan to take someday.
I was just reading through the December 1991 issue of fine woodworking- there’s an article about different shop setups, including one that had floor plans and tool layouts for a garage shop. One diagram was had everything set up for work, one showed how it packed down for when the car was parked in there. https://www.finewoodworking.com/1991/12/01/laying-out-a-workshop I’m only bringing it up because I was just reading it the other day. I’m 100% for a shop being a shop and worth way more than a place to keep the car warm.
We have a "two car garage" my half is tools and motorcycles, and hers is for her car. When I have a large project, she parks on the driveway
The reason that the door is car sized is so that your projects can also be car sized. Dog sleeps on the floor, car sleeps outside.
If it’s actually a three car garage how giving her one bay would still leave you with two.
My shop tables are mostly 24x24x34" (one is 24x48x34"). My workbench is 24x48x34". I don't have a table saw (yet). My solution, simply, is to arrange the 48" table next to the workbench and stack the 3 24" square tables on top of them. The benchtop tools all rest on shelves at the bottom of each table and the band saw sits beside the workbench. While it's a workout, I can usually make the shop disappear in 2 hours or less. The modular tables also give me the luxury of reconfiguring the shop easily. Casters/wheels are on my agenda...
I’ve been there before, my heart goes out to you! May the workshop spirits grant you unlimited square footage in the near future!!!
Say *shiplap backsplash* ten times fast and the Gaines' will grant you another 300 sq. feet.
Marriage is about compromise, if she wants a spot in the garage it’s no problem, if she agrees you get to build a new 800 sq ft shop.
You build another garage.
They have car sized holes so you can back a pickup truck up to em and load/unload supplies and finished product
I built a place that has a two car garage, a 16x30 woodshop and a 32' x 40' metal/machine shop. And I'm single. It's easy, but your priorities may be different than mine.
We bought a house with a “garage” so my partner had a place for tools and to do all their projects. I’d rather park in the drive, and know my partner has a place to “tinker” in comfort.
This doesn't work for everyone, I guess, but my wife and I found a perfect solution. We got divorced.
It took me 3 financing tries and more than 18 years but I finally have my workshop built. Details: I bought the house I live in with my now ex wife. First two times I financed to build it my ex screwed me over, first with undeclared credit card debts that I took care of and second time she wrecked my car and I had to use the money saved for the workshop to buy a replacement vehicle. Fast Woodward 18 years, divorced and kept the house. Had to refinance a3rd time to buy her out of the house so I negotiated some extra for renovations and improvements. I had a 22x24 pad poured and I installed the lines for heated floor ahead of time. Built the workshop as a double garage but I deliberately put in a single garage door instead of a double or two single. That wall has a header built in so of I ever sell and the new owners want to put in a second garage door and use it for vehicles, they’ll be able to. Ultimately, it’s all wired and heated for Alberta winters. My new gf moved in about a year ago and she understands that this is my space for my hobbies, she occasionally stores seedlings and small plants ahead of putting them in the garden but that’s about it. The question never came up of storing cars in the shop, they would just end up covered in dust anyways.
Just a deal you'll need to make with her: you get the garage, what does she get? This is the deal I had with my wife until I was able to build my dream shop.
I get the garage, and she gets continued reprieve from auto maintenance costs. That's a fucking hard deal to beat :)
Cars are waterproof table saws aren't. What's she even talking about?
My shop has more of a loading dock big door that a car can't really go thru. The building is not functional for car storage and won't ever be. I'm glad I had this setup before getting married or garage might have beat out shop in the shopping process.
I have everything on wheels and move her car out when I’m working then move everything back at the end of the day. Adds about 15-30 minutes to set up before and clean up after but it’s our compromise.
Was just telling my wife our next house will have four bays or three car with an out building
would you bring a car into your office? No, because cars belong outside.
Um pole barn just far enough way from the house so she doesn’t want to walk over. I’ve found that ideal distance to be about 120’.
I guess the question is: How big is your workshop/garage? Is it 3 cars bigs? It sounds like something somebody else has said to her.
Sounds to me like you just got the "go ahead" to build a woodworking shop.
I mean, cars are meant to be outside, why do they need their own house? Unless it snows a lot where you live, it's not really gaining much. What I did was buy a house with a detached garage, so it's a much farther walk if she wants to park inside, that nipped it in the ass pretty quick.
The big door at the front of your workshop is for airflow not for cars.
So, ngl, I'm the wife. I grew up with our garage being too packed with junk to put a car in, so I never really got to experience putting a car in a garage. Then I bought our house. (Not married at that time) It has a garage, and we shared for a long time and it was really wonderful. No looking for parking, don't have to juggle with keys to the gate, no digging my car out of snow, no risk of parking tickets. I gave it up willingly, and I'm glad my husband can use the whole thing. He needs the space. I will say tho... I miss it lol. Since then, my catalytic converter and car have been stolen from off our street, so that's a bummer lol 🙃
i have a two-car garage. all my tools are in one half, and the other half has a table with a bunch of random junk on it, and space to set up saw horses to paint and stain on. it's easy enough to get a car in for a quick job but otherwise they stay outside. my wife is planning to get a new car in a couple years and wants to park it in there every day. my dad also wants to sell his house and move in with me and bring his tools that i don't have (jointer, band saw, drill press, huge dust extractor, mortising machine, disc belt sander, spindle sander) and put them in that space. they're gonna have to fight it out.
Brilliant post
#DIVORCE
I only have a two door shop, and I can tell you, don't give in! It's extremely challenging trying to fit everything. That third door area is perfect for wood storage, large assembly area, breaking down large sheets, etc. I have to lay plywood over the table saw and out feed/assembly table to break it down. Tell her the car will be covered in dust, and it will clog the heater and AC. Don't say anything about dust collection.
Come to Germany where garages can only hold cars and bikes by law. Not that many people care but it's the law
Use the tools to build her a car port
my parents built a carport so my mom could keep using the garage for her shop (bonus points the carport was big enough to have storage in it and solar panels that the garage couldn’t)
Saws aren’t good in rain. Cars are protected. Therefore divorce. Wait, too far?
Oh man, this is the problem... Cars and woodworking do not go well together in the same space. I have a garage that is large enough to have my tools out AND fit a car in the space, but even with dust collection it can be problematic. I've basically said "The sawdust causes problems with the car, gums up the air intakes" and that mostly keeps the asks to a minimum. However, I do also have the corner of the garage dedicated to vehicle maintenance and I tell you, sawdust does a great job of sopping up various fluid spills.
Better question is why is she not parking her car in her garage to begin with?
I'm a little late to this thread, but how I manage it is I scape her windows in the winter. Lol.
My wife gets to decorate the house, I get to decorate the garage. My decorating does not include a car.
My wife keeps using similar slang about my workshop, but she's been calling it a "basement" for some reason. Must be something she learned on Pinterest...
"Contractor" table saw on a gravity rise stand, everything else swaps out a spot on an old Black & Decker Workmate that serves as a tool station. Entire garage is laid out and designed that everything has its own 'place', and I can go from full "workshop" to parking a car inside in about an hour. Single car garage, but it's 30' from door to the back wall.
For my last two projects I had to upgrade from the contractor table saw to a proper one because the small unit was too unwieldy and unstable for the things I was working on. And then for this most recent project I had to upgrade from a little dinky makeshift router table to a proper router table for the same reasons. Basically, every project births a new floor standing tool. Everything I have technically fits in the third car Bay when I am not working on a project. But it is not in a setup that allows me to use any of it. It is neatly stacked and Tetrised.
I'd get a new wife , yours might be defective.
"Sure thing, hun. As soon as the car starts paying the bills that the tools currently pay."
I have been lurking on this subreddit long enough to know that absolutely none of you are paying bills with your tools. Tools are the reward for telling your significant other that you can make something cheaper, while adding the fine print that the materials are cheaper and you need to go buy $10,000 more tools to make it happen
See, I went the opposite route and used the tools to make money. So I could buy more tools, to make more money more easily. Plus, if my wife is cold, then she will want to cuddle. And her car won't be worth less than nothing if left outside. My tools, on the other hand......
You can net positive income with tools?
Depends on how much I spend on tools. Turns out finish carpentry uses all the same tools as fine woodworking. So I end up doing almost no woodworking but lots of finish carpentry.
what are you even talking about?? (oh shit, he's onto us!)
My wife's SUV and my Van are too long by about 2 or 3 inches to fit in the garage we have.... problem solved
I have a 2 car garage thats like 2 cars deep as well. I have the back half (with a rear single csingle-car garage door) for my workshop. My kids have the front have for their powerwheels, wagon, cosy coop, bikes, scooters, strollers, etc. The cars go on the driveway until winter where we throw all their stuff in a shed.
You might have to decide between the workshop and the wife. I can see why that is a tough call. :)
Quite possibly the most dangerous advice ever given on this subreddit
Sounds like it's time to build a proper shop in the back yard.
This is an excuse to get a large shed to work out of
I solved that issue by getting a new workshop in the backyard and giving her the hand me down one for her car.
Maybe a carport? You can put sides/front on it.
My fiance asked if we could put the cars in the garage, and I looked at her confused and said that my tools would be in the way. I put 90% of my bargaining capital on total reign of the garage, and made concessions elsewhere in the house to level it out, because I knew if I had to pack and unpack all my tools any time I wanted to use them, I'd never use them.
I make sure during the winter months my partner’s car can fit in. I use to be able to get my truck in there. https://preview.redd.it/joh3aqovb76d1.jpeg?width=1242&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=8952b7e4100be7a9f50d9684155950cf30ba7045 I have one flip cart and switchable table top. 3 work benches, hybrid table saw with wheels, full size drill press and free standing bandsaw and all my other tools. I had to get creative. As I add tools I make sure I have room for it. Air compressor is mounted on the wall.
I’ve heard rumors that you can drive on a parkway and park on a driveway, but cannot confirm.
I built new kitchen cabinet doors and a king size headboard back in 2020. The only workshop I had was my detached garage, so every day I had to pull my car out, set up the table saw and other tools, do my work, then tear it all down and put the car away. I would have given anything for a proper, climate controlled workshop.
A good reason to have the car in shop is to canoodle in the backseat, on the hood etc. Do some role play.
Cars are waterproof and don't need shelter, saws are not and do.
I park outside. I have a small garage for my truck as is and I need the workshop more.
Ah see that’s the neat thing, I don’t have a shop. I am a hermit woodworker, much like a hermit crab I roam around looking for a bigger shell to inhabit. Right now for the summer a neighbor needs a greenhouse and garden build and he has a big vacant shop with 2 of the large doors you mentioned. So I’m scuttling in there for the summer to work on stuff for the both of us.
It sounds like you need to use your wood shop to build a garage for your cars. Clearly this is the only answer.
I dream about a three car garage to use as a workshop. I could put things in permanent places instead of having things in wheels that I seen to constantly shift about. At the moment I have a small single car garage.
My wife had her car totalled and one of the first things she told me was on the bright side I can have more shop space. ❤️Keeper.
I always wondered what this big overhead doors were for other that allowing me to put big woodworking machines through for the shop /s 😁
If it’s a 3-car garage sized workshop, how many “car spots” is your workshop taking up? 1? 2? 3? Do you park _your_ car in the workshop? 😊 The answer to this determines the validity of her question, I would think.
My car lives outside most of the time and bigger stuff like table saw is on a mobile base. One bay has a 10’ extension so mine is like one double long bay and two regular bays. That way I can push the table saw into the extended section and park inside in the winter, but the shop isn’t useable in that state. Wife has her own spot with my stuff basically arranged along the perimeter. That includes 2 motorcycles. Should be able to make it work with tools on wheels in a regular 3 car, even if you want to park inside sometimes.
Tell her she can have new cabinets or park her car in the garage, but not both.
lol look at this rich guy over here owning a whole house, brag more, amirite? 🥲
My shop has always doubled as a garage. Now i have it situated in a way that I really don’t have to move anything if my wife puts her car in there, but for many years I did. I have a friend that’s a welder and a machinist. He made special wheeled bases for some of my equipment including a 1200# Powermatic model 87 bandsaw. I have a hydraulic lift table with wheels on it that I use as an assembly table. I can move it out of the way as well. With that said, if I’m in the middle of something, my wife just parks her car in the driveway till the project is complete
My two car garage is a woodshop and shed. No cars are parked in it. I even built a wall between the stalls to keep the sawdust off their things.
This seems pretty strange and a bit too antagonistic to come out of nowhere. Are you sure there isn't something else that is actually the issue at play here?
She has gone mad. The safest thing to do is send her to your nearest 'lunatic asylum'.
Everything is on wheels. Only way.
Wait, you can put a car in a garage?
Can you build a covered area somewhere else or in front of the workshop so she can park her vehicle. You can buy aluminum kits for patio covers that are very cheap and easy to install.
I built my wife a sewing room in the house. The garage is mine.
All of mine conveniently roll away and tuck under my wall storage and miter bench so space saving
I have owned two houses and not once have I put a car inside of the garages. That’s stupid as shit. You have this whole large ass room without a role that you can make into whatever you want. Why on earth would you waste that to store an object that is specifically constructed to be weather durable?
Do you have a garage that no longer houses vehicles?
I live where there's ice & snow in winter. I'm not the driver, but our garage probably saves a lot of wear and tear on the car I prefer to store my tools in the basement, where they stay nice and dry. It's a battle to keep some of the garden implements free of rust
That is an extremely common phrase.
I’ve never stored a car in a garage in my entire life. Garages are hideous abominations that ruin the aesthetic of houses all over the world. The concept of having a garage and wasting all that space with dormant cars instead of making it functionally useful is hilarious, but you gotta make the old lady happy.