That sounds about right. You can always make a couple of cardboard pillars and tape them to the floor and park the car where it would go and see if you can still move all the equipment around it. It sucks to have to move the engine hoist out the back door, through the lawn, and back in the front door to use it.
In reply to mazdeuce :
I had to play "tool tetris" a lot in our old garage, that game sucks. I think if I get the position right, I should be able to get an engine hoist past the left side, and a car around the other three sides if needed.
That's what I would check then. Tape a pillar in place next to the wall and make sure you can roll everything past it. If you can then you're golden.
Since I built the Grosh I've had five projects in there. The RX7 and Fergus before the lift was in place, and the RSX rally car, the R63, and now Ferdinand. Ferdinand isn't inside yet, but the motor, transmission, and the majority of the rest of the parts are, which is highlighting an ongoing problem. When I take stuff off a project, I don't have anywhere to put it other than on the floor. Fergus had parts kicked underneath for a couple years, the R63 took up every available horizontal space in the building, and now things look like this.
I need shelving. Badly. Ideally I'd have a series of rolling racks that I could move next to the project, fill up, and then move to a corner until I need them. Unfortunately I don't have extra corners to put them in. What I really need is shelves that will go away when I'm not using them and magically appear when I do. So today I spent the money and put these up.
They gave me 48 square feet of my floor back. I'm going to grab more brackets and another sheet of plywood and am going to reclaim another 48 square feet tomorrow. That should just about take care of most of the parts that are taking up space. As I reassemble Ferdinand I'l pull shelves and stack them on top, like this, and the shelves will magically disappear.
Special thanks to Mrs. Deuce who, even though she was all cleaned up and ready to head to a meeting, helped me pull the table saw out and cut the plywood before the rain started. I'm hoping the guys in the meeting like the smell of fresh cut pine just in case she didn't get all of the sawdust out of her hair. 
I keep staring at the work bay wanting to clean it up, put up drywall, and lay down a couple layers of Rust Bullet. Then actually build the benches and cabinets to hold tools at the end and make the space brighter and more useful. When I didn't have space I needed space. Now that I have space I need about twice as much space.
I've found that if you are the type to fill up the space you are working in, you'll likely fill up any extra space you can create. It takes some sort of mental shift to get out of that habit. Maybe limiting your project queue could help? I have this problem with my two car garage and 10x10 storage locker. I am hoping after the challenge to get rid of a lot of the "just in case" stuff, but am afraid I'll find something else to occupy the space, rather than having more room to maneuver while working on projects.
A) miata??
B) I'll repeat something I heard/read here a while back that was a major shift for my garage perspective: "The floor is not a shelf!" (slight paraphrase?). Apologies if you were the one who actually said that.
I concur with bluej. Make a list of items that need to be on the floor. Such as garbage cans, car jack, floor standing drill press,... etc. Then find ways to get everything else off of the floor. Home Depot/Lowes/Menards all have some great wall rack systems.
I noticed the double slotted brackets you installed to hang your shelves. Super handy. Stupid expensive for what it is.
Although the photos probably don't show it, I don't have a problem with the stuff that is permanent to the Grosh like jacks and jack stands and such. There is a bit of tidying up to do, but everything has a proper home EXCEPT for the parts from current projects. There is a stack of heater/oven from the Airstream that I don't want to pitch until I make a couple of decisions, and the rest is from the cabover. I have one small bit of Mercedes special parts from that job, and one small bin of stuff that will go back on Fergus, but I've stopped holding parts from other projects. Everything went with the RX7 and the rally car, no extra parts at all.
So it's not past projects or tool storage that is the issue, it's current projects. A completely disassembled truck takes up a LOT of space.
Willis said:I noticed the double slotted brackets you installed to hang your shelves. Super handy. Stupid expensive for what it is.
Agreed on both counts. I put these up, put a single shelf bracket in the track, and stood on the end of it with my full weight. Not saying the wall will hold 15 mazdeuces at a time, but the product does what it says it will.
As to the Miata, it's being "stored" for a friend. Storage means that I can and should drive it around at least a couple times a week. I've never owned a Miata before, it's fun.
In reply to mazdeuce :
In that case, I'd say your shelf setup is about ideal. Maybe add some pallet racking for the really heavy things?
mazdeuce said:They gave me 48 square feet of my floor back. I'm going to grab more brackets and another sheet of plywood and am going to reclaim another 48 square feet tomorrow. That should just about take care of most of the parts that are taking up space. As I reassemble Ferdinand I'l pull shelves and stack them on top, like this, and the shelves will magically disappear.
I would consider bolt plywood onto the studs, and then figuring out a way for some plywood supports to swing in/out and then have the shelves swing down to cover them when closed... so that way the sytem is always attached and you're not jostling plywood around. If you're always "clearing off and moving stuff up" then the swung shut shelves won't have to drop through where there's stuff being stored. Plus, that way
In reply to sleepyhead :
That wall will eventually be drywalled. There is also a non-zero chance that I'll hate having those shelves there. They're sized to fit between the wall and the lift post when the lift is there. If they're up high then I can duck under them and walk around the car. If I were to put the post back in now I'd have to walk through the shop area to get from the front to the back of the car.
Looking at those shelves and the amount of steel you've already put on them, use every available hole to attach the runners to the studs. I've had shelf brackets like those fail by pulling off the wall - it's ain't pretty.
I have a bunch of 48 x 16 rolling wire shelving units. I love them and hate them. The ones in my basement generally serve their purpose: One is long term storage of parts removed from my 1800ES that I don't want to store in my shed. Another has a lot of old bike parts on it. Another has other misc crap on it. The one in my garage, however, is a bit of a double-edge sword. It has various car fluids, a battery chargers, and then just junk... stuff that I really need to find a better home for. The depth of the unit makes working on the cars a PITA - this also goes for the old kitchen cabinets hanging in my garage. While they don't take up floor space, they do eat up general working space.
Garage organization is an ever-evolving process... Sometimes when you set something up it looks great, but then when you start working things don't always go as well as hoped.
I was going to say "plan, then improvise" but reality is more like, "plan, spend more money than you want to, realize that it doesn't work the way you thought it would, get angry about spending the money, improvise"
I like the rolling rack idea. You don't have to find wall space for all of them. You can stack them all side-by-side with no clearance in between and pull out the one you need. This buys you time until you can figure out how you want to lay things out permanently.
In reply to Jerry From LA :
It's what I'll do someday when I have a shop that is dedicated to this sort of nonsense. My future space is developing as I use my current space.
Along those lines, I had a recent task where I got to flex the creative part of my brain a bit and it and me realize that I needed a couple of days off from the cabover. I keep going to bed with the same issues bouncing around in my head and it's affecting my ability to shut my brain off. Mrs. Deuce helped me grab some plywood this morning and I'm going to knock together a couple of cabinets for the work bay. I'm not going to finish them now, no doors, just useful boxes. A bit of problem solving and assembly to knock my worries out of their rut.
I look at the space under the tire loft as being the perfect spot for a series of rolling shelves where "in process" parts can be stored. Out of the way, but easily accessible.
Jerry From LA said:I like the rolling rack idea. You don't have to find wall space for all of them. You can stack them all side-by-side with no clearance in between and pull out the one you need. This buys you time until you can figure out how you want to lay things out permanently.
Saw this on an Adam Savage (Mythbusters) video.
They build their benches so you can nest them when you don't need all of them, double stacking the bench top when nested:
Might be harder to do in wood than steel though...
In reply to Karacticus :
Well, it might be time to fix the welder. Thanks for that, it gives me some ideas.
Looks like the table design was actually Jamie Hyneman's
You should call my brother; he's a better carpenter than I am a mechanic and I am sure he would jump at the chance to trade his time and skills for time on your lift.
Literally nobody anywhere wants me to rehash building boxes with pocket screws, so I'll jump right to boxes ready to hang.
A relaxing day. So nice do a couple hours work and still be clean. I was doing some mental math while working and I think I'm adding 150 square feet of horizontal surface between the shelves I put up and the cabinets and shelves yet to come. I'm pretty geeked about that.
Will said boxes have provisions for adjustable shelving too?
Yes, I have about two billion shelf pins holes to drill. They'll have holes on the inside for regular shelves and holes on the outside for shelves between the cabinets like in the shop area. Some stuff belongs in a cabinet and some stuff belongs out on a shelf. Doing it this way gives me both.
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