Designing My Workshop, Part 2: Other People’s Workshops

In Part 1, I shared a brief description and some lessons learned from each of my past workshops. Today, we’ll explore a few of the exceptional workshops of fellow woodworkers that inspired and informed my own design. (Be sure to click the links for a more in-depth look than I offer here). One thing you might notice if you’re familiar with these folks: They’re all Windsor chairmakers. Though it wasn’t a conscious decision to focus on the shops of Windsor chairmakers, it will come as no surprise if you’ve followed my interests on this blog. These guys use the tools that I like to use, and they work in ways in which I like to work. They designed their shops to be efficient with hand tools (and they know a thing or two about aesthetics to boot).

Greg Pennington’s workshop:

Dimensions: 18′ x 36′ (648 sq.ft. on the ground floor, plus a loft and porch)

Construction: Timber frame, asphalt shingle roof, clapboard siding, wooden floors and wall paneling.

What I Like About It: Okay, let’s be honest. Greg’s shop is freaking gorgeous. Exposed post and beam construction, endless expanses of wood from floor to ceiling, windows on every wall. If I had unlimited time, this is the kind of shop that I would prefer to build. It’s a big, it’s inviting, and it’s finished out to a tremendous degree.

But… Greg uses the space to teach chairmaking workshops for several students at a time. It’s quite a bit more space than I can justify for the work that I do and the equipment that I use. And though the idea of a timber frame is appealing, I lack the tools and experience required to do an efficient job of timber framing. I’m completely on board with the wooden paneling and big windows, though.

Curtis Buchanan’s workshop:

Dimensions: 16′ x 20′ (320 sq.ft. on the ground floor, plus a loft and porch)

Construction: Timber frame, metal roof, board-and-batten siding, wooden floors and wall paneling.

What I Like About It: At less than half the size of Greg’s shop, this workshop is an appropriate size for a single woodworker – after all, it’s been the birthplace of Curtis’ phenomenal chairs for more than 20 years. It features wood floors and paneling and windows throughout. I especially like the well-used porch that wraps around two sides. A porch is the natural place to use a shavehorse, and it provides a lot of extra workspace for minimal effort. The unpainted exterior is attractive, unpretentious, and it saves time and money.

But… Curtis’ only power tools are a lathe and a bandsaw. I will be looking to house a few more electron hogs than he does, so a bit more space might be handy.

Elia Bizzarri’s workshop:

Dimensions: 18′ x 28′ (504 sq.ft. on the ground floor, plus upstairs)

Construction: Stick frame, metal roof, clapboard siding, wooden floors and wall paneling.

What I Like About It: Killer paint scheme. I would totally copy it, if it didn’t utterly clash with my green-and-tan house paint. Besides that, I love the big double doors for moving equipment in and out with ease and the triplet of north-facing windows above a massive workbench. Like the other two shops, the wall paneling and flooring is wood, and it has a loft for storage. The size is just about perfect. An under-appreciated design element that I really like is the generous roof overhang. In the balmy Deep South, where wood rots if you sneeze on it, adequate protection from the weather is critical if you intend to use wood siding.

But… I really want a porch on my shop. Besides that, this approaches my Platonic ideal.

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So there you have it. Those are the three workshops that were agitating my gray matter as I sat down to make plans for my workshop. From these shops, and from my own experiences, I made a list of, let’s call them “first principles” for my workshop design. I’ll cover them in the next installment.

Designing My Workshop, Part 1

So, your new home is near-perfect, but devoid of a workshop. What’s a woodworker to do? If you’re like me, you are probably already skilled at gravely underestimating the time and scope required of even the most mundane projects. Naturally, you’ll convince yourself that building your own workshop will take less than a year of your free time, most of which has been long-affianced to raising three children, a dog, and ten chickens, maintaining a home, a large garden, and a small forest, and the occasional leisurely outing to appease your patient wife. Naturally.

All kidding aside, I have a number of good reasons for choosing to build my own workshop. 1) It’s cheaper.

Okay, one. I have one good reason to build my own workshop. But I have budgetary constraints and a high tolerance for self-inflicted stress. My dad lives ten miles away. He has a fully hydraulic Wood-Mizer sawmill and a surplus of logs. So lumber is pretty close to free. My labor is free as well (Note: If my boss is reading, don’t get any ideas). Aside from the lumber and labor, the major expenses in a workshop are sheathing, roofing, nails, screws, wiring, and insulation. Back-of-the-napkin math suggests that I can build my shop for at least 80% less than than I could pay someone to build it.

So I’m building my own workshop. Now the hard part is settling on a design. Blank slate. Endless possibilities. Where to begin? In the words of George Santayana, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” I have worked from multitudinous shops in the past. They all have something to teach:

2005-2007: 30′ x 30′ insulated metal building. Shared with my dad and younger brother, along with their mechanic tools, welding equipment, etc. Ample room in theory, but in practice, the shop was a cluttered mess due to and abundance of users and equipment and a lack of storage. Honestly, a great deal of the cluttered mess was attributable to yours truly – but over the years, I’ve found that a shop space that is too large is simply an invitation for clutter, because it always seems as though yesterday’s mess can be moved aside…until it can’t. And then you’ve got your work cut out for you just to get organized again.

2008-2010: 10′ x 20′ plywood shed. It was rotting from the ground up when I bought it, so I jacked it up, layed an extra layer of cement block, and re-built the floor. I wired it, insulated it, and paneled it with 1×12 pine. I spent far more time working on the shop than working in the shop. Even so, I quickly learned that 10′ is too dang narrow for a workshop. This was not the smallest shop that I’ve worked in, but due to the awkward dimensions, it was the least user-friendly (even after all of the cosmetic and structural improvements).

2010-2011: 20′ x 20′ cinderblock garage with dirt floor. No windows, bare lightbulbs, and sparse outlets. In spite of the austere surroundings, I build some rather nice stuff in this shop, including my first ladderback chairs. However, nothing short of starvation could convince me to work in a windowless, dirt-floor shop again. Aesthetics aren’t everything, but they are something.

2011-2014: 24′ x 40′ garage. 9′ ceilings, ample windows. The back of the shop was partitioned into two smaller rooms, one of which I kept for storage, the other I maintained as my hand tool shop. This could have been an ideal workspace, except for the inconvenient fact there was no door on the front of the shop. And money was too tight to actually add a garage door. I made peace with the constant maintenance required to keep the rust gremlins at bay, and I did some of my proudest work in that shop.

2014-2015: No workshop for nine months. I sold my tablesaw, planer, and drill press put the bandsaw and lathe in storage.

2015-2016: 12′ x 16′ plywood shack, slowly being devoured by an adjacent sand dune. Only enough room for a workbench and a lathe. Despite the crowded quarters and minimal equipment, I re-discovered the joy of woodworking in this shop. With no fancy equipment that I could rely on as a substitute for actual ability, I focused on projects that were suited to hand tool woodworking, and my skills improved markedly. I found it necessary to maintain an exceptionally neat workspace, and to work on only one project at a time, because there was simply no room for clutter.

2017: No workshop again. My tools are stored in the basement, waiting to be awakened in their new home. The drafting table awaits.

Because I am also a nerd in addition to being a woodworker, I decided to plot out my shop size over the past dozen years. Of note is the fact that the quality of my work has steadily increased even as the size of my shop has varied wildly during that time. The lesson here is that the size of my shop might have an effect on the efficiency and enjoyability of my woodworking experience, but not the quality. Honestly, this should come as no surprise to anyone who has actually put steel to wood.

In the next few posts, I’ll highlight a few workshops that I haven’t worked in, but that served as inspirational/aspirational starting points for my design; cover the basic principles that guided my design; and finally, I’ll finish up with the blueprints that evolved from those principles.

All Roads Lead to Home.

It ‘s fitting that the last blog post on this site was entitled “Empty”. Originally intended as a descriptor of my workshop, vacated in advance of my relocation, I also serves as an accurate assessment of the volume of my writing during the intervening year. I’ll not bore you with excuses or apologies. I didn’t feel like writing, so I didn’t.

It doesn’t help – not one bit – that I’m in the midst of the longest stretch of my adult life without a workshop. When my family moved from Fernandina Beach, FL to Athens, GA last December, we were prepared to spend a couple months in my Dad’s guesthouse while we searched for a home of our own. We were in the market for our “forever” home. A place to put down roots and watch our children grow up. More acres than neighbors. An open patch for a garden and blueberry bushes. A forest to explore and trees to harvest for firewood and woodworking. And, of course, a spacious and inviting workshop.

The search was fruitless for about a month. My wife and I had different ideas of perfection. My heart was set on a small, outdated (read:ugly) home on 46 gorgeous acres of oaks and pastures. She gravitated towards a stately new home on a cul-de-sac with seven acres and four neighbors (at least the acre:neighbor ratio was right). We kept searching for a month, but my Dad’s tiny guest house seemed to grow smaller by the day with three kids underfoot. We finally compromised, and by compromise, I mean I agreed to make an offer on the home she wanted.

It took a week of back-and-forth with the inflexible corporate owners (the home’s builder had been a casualty of the financial crisis and was purchased out of bankruptcy), but we finally had a contract in our hands between Christmas and New Year’s. She was ecstatic, and I had warmed up to the fact that I wouldn’t have to spend thousands of dollars and hours of my life on repairs and upgrades.

The day after we signed the contract, our dream home hit the market.

Driveway view.

Back deck sunrise

Towering northern red oak (Quercus rubra)

It was only on 8 acres (plenty for my wife – a bit paltry for me), but they were the most gorgeous 8 acres in the county, as far as I was concerned. The house was perched upon a 100-foot bluff and nestled among soaring oaks and sprightly beeches. The elevation declined towards the north end of the property as the oaks gave way to tulip-poplars and river birches straddling a wide, lazy creek. A garden spot was already fenced in, as well as a dozen blueberry bushes and two rows of blackberries. A small orchard of peaches, pears, apples, and figs dotted one side of the garden, with a chicken coop and a garden shed on the other. The home itself was clean, cute, generously-sized and well-built, with spacious decks in the back and a covered porch on the front. It was Perfect.

Springtime view of the driveway.

Apple blossoms

Garden spot.

Home-grown produce.

I showed the pictures to my wife. She was…not happy. Quite the opposite, in fact. She knew I had initial reservations about the home on the cul-de-sac. Nonetheless, I assured her that I would be happy there (which was true. I’m happy most places). What was I doing still looking at houses? And besides, we have a contract!

Well, here’s the thing about real estate contracts: contingency clauses. We had 14 days to arrange financing and inspect the home, and during that period we could walk away for any reason. I was not prepared to go through with the biggest financial decision of my life when a home that we both liked better was on the market and ready for offers. She grudgingly agreed to let me arrange a viewing.

She was ready to make an offer the moment we walked through the front door. A month later, on January 31, 2017, we closed on the house. We’ve made it through one Gardening Season, and the Firewood Season is just getting started. It is home. It is Perfect.

Well, except for one little thing. There is no workshop. Not yet, anyway.