How did you achieve your dream workshop?

You never achieve it. Every time you get close you see something else that will make it better.

"Billy G"
 
I'm simply a tool guy. If I have any free cash, I'm on craigslist searching for anything that might strike my fancy. I want what I want and dont have a whole lot of patients about it. If I cant afford the one I want, I make what I want or change a cheaper made version to be what I want. I always say theres 2 ways to have things. Mae enough to buy them, or learn enough to make them.

My fiirst "shop" was a single car garage in a duplex. Did not take long to fill that. Then we moved on to a house with a 2 car garage. My dad got me a little lincoln welder. I came home from work every day and welded scrap till it stuck. That welder was the biggest down fall my wallet ever met. Started making things "I needed" Tire rakes, work benches, tv stands, fish tanks stands... I took a liking to steel in a big way. That 2 car became full to the gills between tools and our off road mini buggies.

Currently we are on 2.5ac. The wife now has the 2car. I have a 30x30 with two 10ft tall bay doors. This is bout half the size I need in truth. I could make due with a 40x40 with a 50x50 slab under it. 10ft slap off one side and the front. After building my off road suspension and buying so many machined and cnc cut parts, my love of metal got that much deeper.

So the end result for me is to finish my manual/cnc schooling. Then buy my bridgeport knee mill or the like and a fairly large lath, 4x4 or 4x8 plasma table and a surface grinder to start off with. I want to be set up when I'm older and retired. at 35yr I figure I got 25yr to set the old man up to tool around his tools
 
avayan said:
I don't know the exact details on why basements are non existent here in TX, but I can assure you there are close to none. The only underground facilities are holes dug down to make small shelter to use during tornado season. Rare, but the only hole in the ground I know about.

The only plausible solution down here would be to get me an acre worth of land, build a decent house to keep my family happy and then attach some sort of a garage building. I will have to keep the respective HOA and neighbors happy as well, not to mention try to stay as close to work as possible, so there is plenty of ways to make this harder than easy. With $400K this would be piece of cake, but $400K are not that much piece of cake ;-)
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The main reason we don't see a lot of basements here in North Texas is that the frost line is about 4-6" worst case. So, you really don't need basements like you do up north. There are some people that have basements here (rare, but not unheard of) and there are a lot of commercial buildings that used to be built with basements before tilt-wall construction took over. It's mostly an economic decision, but also, there are a lot of problems with the clay soil. Reinforced Concrete Slab foundations are the norm, sometimes with concrete piers to bedrock. I grew up on the Texas coast where the elevation was about 3' above sea level, so there were hardly any basements there either due to the high water table and flooding. As for my shop, when I built my current house about 12 years ago, I built it with a connected 3 car garage thinking I would have all the space in the world. Well, if I was ever able to do it over again, I would make that a 5 car garage so I could use one or two bays for actually parking a car or two, and one for storing all the stuff that I swear I am going to use one day and then the last two bays for the shop. There is never enough space.
 
104 days till retirement and counting!
Keep my machine tools tucked away in the basement where it nice and warm for the winter in northern Wisconsin.
16/24 x 120” SB Lathe sits right under the living room. Series I Bridgeport under the bed room next to the skid steer between the garage doors.
This is where I spend my winters
 
I started acquiring tools when I was about 12 or so and I still have most of them. I bought my first lathe and mill back in the 70's along with most of my measuring tools. At that time I was not married and no kids and my equipment was my priority. I got married around '84 had a couple of kids so that put a lot of stuff on hold for a few years. Also I bought a floating home (houseboat, depending on what part of the country you're in) so I didn't have a lot of space to devote to shop equipment and weight is an issue when you are floating in the river. But I did have a 13x40 Jet Lathe, and a Bridgeport Mill on board. Owned that houseboat for close to 25 years.

About 6 years ago I finally bought some property in the country with a nice 30x40 shop already built. The bottom line is that it took me about 40 years to get set up like I always wanted to. If you don't have unlimited resources it takes time and a goal. Now I'm semi retired and pretty much have things set up as I want them so I can putter around in the shop. I put the money I make with the shop equipment back into the shop and don't go into debt buying equipment.

The down side of having a shop that size and a son who works on cars is that I only get to use about 1/4 of my shop, we are continuously fighting for space

Jim

Eagle 3-axis CNC Mill, w/ DawsonControls CNC controller.
Jet 13x40 lathe
Harvel 6x18 surface grinder
Miller SyncroWave 250 welder w/TIG
Lincoln 135 Wirefeed welder
And a bunch of the other tools and supporting equipment needed to have fun in the shop.

Every new project requires a new tool, even if that tool has nothing to do with the project.

http://www.dawsoncontrols.com/
 
A houseboat with a Bridgeport, I love it.
 
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