First, sorry about the length of this post! A finishing area has continued to be a wish of mine. Initially I wanted to build a finishing room in the unfinished part of the building where I store my tractor, lumber and misc "stuff", but that will first require pouring concrete since there is a dirt/gravel floor, plus I'll have to do framing, insulation, electrical, heat, etc. We have a lot of other things we want to do with the house, so this is a long way off, if ever, unless of course the lottery pool at work hits the Powerball tonight. Since that's fairly unlikely, I've decided to look for other options.
One thought is to move my hardware storage and 8' of cabinets/counters off the one wall. The area I'm describing is in the first picture. I have about 2' by 8' of the metal panels that hold Akro-bins which could be reconfigured vertically in another TBD area of the shop. The drawbacks to this location is finding the wall space for the hardware and the cabinetry, and the fact that my furnace is adjacent to that area. I can probably move at least 2 of the 3 cabinets under the adjacent window, but that is where I currently store my drum sander when not in use. I also use the window for an AC unit during the summer.
I have this room in my shop that the previous owner had built as a storage room. When I was initially building out the interior, I had thought about turning it into a finishing room, but with the help of fellow Creekers, found that it was too small to be practical. I finished off the interior of the room as an office and have a computer, my stereo, and a small fridge in there. The room is shown in a picture below. I've also thought about tearing out the room and using the space for finishing. The drawbacks include needing to find a place for the stuff that's in there--I'd probably have to build a cabinet to keep the dust off the electronics, which I'd have to find a space for. I also would lose the ability to eventually heat the space with an electic baseboard to have an area to keep glues and finishes above freezing. Additionally, I'd have to find a new way to install my cyclone and blower, and I'd have to find a new space for my plywood storage.
(sorry--can't figure out how to get this to display as an image instead of a link--if you click the link you can see what I'm talking about)
I like the idea of being able to create a finishing area using curtains, but with 12' ceilings, that's rather difficult. I built a knockdown spray booth, but it is difficult to use because 1/2 of the year the only window that I can use it by has the AC unit installed in it. What I've recently begin thinking about is creating an enclosure like an open-face spray booth, deep enough to "store" a decent size project. I'd install a set of heavy canvas or plastic curtains across the front that would allow me to close the curtains to keep dust from settling on a project in the finishing stage allowing me to work on other stuff. I'm thinking this booth would need to be about 6' wide, 7' high, 5' deep to allow for room in the back for a set of spray booth-like filters. A large fan would be installed in the wall to draw out fumes. I would finish the interior with drywall or smooth white paneling. Of course if I could find a deal on a used booth I'd jump right on that.
Any way, I'm hoping that one or two people will make it to this point in my post and have a couple ideas that might prompt me to find a decent solution.
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Originally Posted by lou sansone
