Organize My Workshop With Me for 6 Months Away

If you don't already know, my family's going to Argentina for six months - myself, my husband, and our two kids. We have somebody staying in our house, but I can't leave my workshop in my parents garage for six months looking messy and disorganized. I'm going to get it all cleaned up, because that's the right thing to do. I also have a couple of things that I need to deal with, like this countertop on my workbench that is covered in epoxy from all of the epoxy pours I've been doing lately. It needs to come off and switched for a different board. I want things organized and put things back together so my parents can utilize their garage while I am gone.

Organize My Workshop With Me for 6 Months Away | Getting Started

The first thing I needed to do was pull out all of the workbenches so I could access all of the stuff behind them and inside of them. Two of the work benches are mobile. One of them is stationary. I recently had to redo the big cutting bench I have. I really needed a space where I was able to cut large pieces of plywood without having to put them on the ground, so I made this moving workbench for that.

One of the major things I needed to do in this space was to put a bunch of scrap wood away, it kind of just piles up over time. I have a really nice organizer hung on the wall where I can sort the wood. It is sorted with the nicest wood on the bottom and it gets rougher as you go up the wall.

While I was hoping to get all of this done in one day, it had to be done over multiple days because I had to get a bunch of tile I had stored at my house and bring back to store inside of the stationary workbench. This was actually leftover tile from when my mom redid one of her bathrooms, but I kept it because the contractor was going to throw the tile away and I have a plan for it in my bathroom at my house. I needed a better place for it for the next six months and I was able to find a spot in the workbench. I put away all of my tools and little things that were scattered all over the place. Then it was time to tackle the top of the moving workbench.

Organize My Workshop With Me for 6 Months Away | The Workbench

This was absolutely covered in epoxy. This was actually a door from an old enclosed work bench I removed a few years ago that was in this garage. There are a couple of places where there was cardboard or wood that was epoxied to the top. Luckily, I have another whole piece I can replace it with. However, once I started pulling out the screws, I realized some of the screws were covered in epoxy, which was going to make my life a little bit harder. There was really no way to get to the screws out unless I sanded down the epoxy, which took a lot longer than I was planning. I made sure to put on all of my PPE because when epoxy is being sanded it sends plastic particles into the air which is not something you want to bring in. Since I was just trying to get to the screw heads, I used 40 grit sandpaper, and was able to quickly get to the screws and unscrew them. I ended up being pretty happy with how quickly I was able to get this done, especially since I was worried this would take forever.

Then it was time for the new top for the workbench. I had the other door from the enclosed workbench I was able to pull out of my larger stack of scrap wood. It was kind of heavy because it is pretty thick plywood and is double stacked meaning there are two pieces of plywood stacked on top of each other that are glued together, which is nice because it makes it really sturdy. Once I got it on there, I got everything lined up and screwed the piece in.

I did not cut the cutting groove I had in the last piece because I just don't have time for that right now. I will do it when I get back and I'll be sure to show you how I do that when it is time for that, because it's actually super helpful!

To wrap things up I made sure everything was put back together and put everything away, including some stuff in the over the car storage in the garage. It looks really good. It's all cleaned up and I can now leave with the knowledge that everything is put in its place waiting for me to come back.