My Workplaces

I want to share my workspace because I want to show that even if you don’t have a proper workshop, you still can do a lot of stuff.
I may set up something like a workshop in my garage later this year, but this depends on whether or not I can fit a workshop area and my Smart Car in one garage (I need to have my little car in the garage during winter time to save myself from scraping off the ice every morning.). If it works out like planned, the garage will more or less replace the balcony for all the messy and smelly stuff.

Excuse me if all the workspaces I post look too tidy, but we had a birthday party recently and we pulled all our efforts together to tidy up (well, there needs to be some role model for the kids, heh?!?).

I almost exclusively use hand operated tools (files, saws, scissors, … you know what I mean) and some power tools (cordless drill, electric jigsaw, well, that’s about it….oh, I forgot my router table – I don’t use that very often though as I cannot mount it on a workbench because I don’t have one. So it’s a little “jumpy” when used without clamping down to something).

Space is tight in my condo (which I share with my wife and daughter), so I use a small wooden stepladder and some clamps (well, I only have 2 of them) as a replacement for a workbench with a vice on the balcony.

So this brings me to my second workplace – THE BALCONY – where most of the hardcore stuff happens (sawing, filing, drilling, painting, … , stuff that’s too dirty or smelly for inside the condo).
It’s nice working outside if the weather is ok, but currently, we are still around freezing temperatures. So I’m waiting for spring and summer (This is also the only place where I can leave my tools and project parts for as long as I’m working on a project).

All the hardcore stuff requires some planning (or thinking), which brings me to my first workplace – THE DESK.
My desk mostly consists of my laptop and a lot of clutter surrounding it. Usually there’s just enough space to get my hands on the keyboard. The rest of the desks surface is cluttered with wires, batteries, drawings of my little one (she loves to draw me pictures which end up on my desk until I put them into the “memory bin”. This is a real bin, not the waste basket!!!).
My desk is the place where I gather all the ideas I get while browsing the internet (or the memos I send myself to my private e-mail-address). I sometimes use office software to sketch up bigger ideas (like the kitchen-bar-pantry-instalment or the home-cinema-furniture-you-don’t-get-anywhere).
The little stuff (the instructables already posted) usually go from head-to-product or from head-to-hand-sketch-to-product. Most of my (smaller) projects develop as I go, like the cardboard iPad-stand which I didn’t even post (yet) as I thought it’s too unchallenging. But maybe I’ll post it anyway should anyone inquire about it.

Stuff like the cardboard iPad-stand brings me to my third and fourth workplace – THE KITCHEN – and – THE LIVING ROOM.
The kitchen is narrow and consists of a left side with all the cooking stuff (oven, cook top) and the right side with my kitchen-bar-pantry-instalment. You can see the “bar” part of the right kitchen side. This is also a DIY and required a lot of planning as I couldn’t easily get all that heavy wood cut at home. So all dimensions had to fit perfectly. The “pantry” part is missing in the picture, but it consists mainly of IKEA system-cupboards framed by the dark painted wood which I used for the bar-thingy (cutting the holes for the lights was really a mess – 4 cm thick hardwood and only a drill and a jigsaw…). But there’s real good lighting…

I use the living room mostly for cardboard or sewing oriented DIY. Not much to say about this one. We use it for dinner, too, so I have to clean up and interrupt my projects at least once or twice a day to make some space for meals. I think my wife doesn’t really like tools and scrap wood on the dining table, but she mostly likes what comes out from my DIY. Another one of them being the home-cinema-furniture-you-don’t-get-anywhere. It’s basically a wall mounted shelf unit where the backplane (made from untreated wood) goes from the floor all the way up to the ceiling with the flatscreen in the middle (you can see it on the right hand side of the picture). The backplane also hides all the cable clutter.