DIY Workbench

I am so excited to have my first  garage ever! Although it was clean and new, it was empty. So,the first thing I added was my recycling station and then some cabinetry for storage. But in my opinion no garage is complete without a workbench. After all where will I make all of those DIY mistakes and discoveries to share with you?

I bought two tall storage cabinets  to anchor the space. I’m using these to bookend the workbench and I used my existing IKEA lack shelf as a guide 🙂 So that made the length of my bench 75″, which is a good length. I decided on 22″ deep, as I didn’t want it to stick out beyond the cabinets. Decision made! My workbench will be 22″ x 75″ 🙂

Materials

Originally my plan was to use a couple more of the small matching cabinets to the tall ones, and then just add a top to them. But they weren’t very tall, and you don’t want to be bending down to work on projects. That is just asking for a back ache  🙁

Plus, I have some larger items that I wanted to store under the bench, and they would’t fit in the cabinets. So, I decided to build the bench out of wood.

This is such an incredibly easy DIY workbench. I thought about doing a more complicated one, complete with drawers and shelves, but we  have already added a lot of storage, so this is more about having a place to hammer and paint on.

You can totally put this together in an afternoon.

Here we go!

Supplies:

• 1 sheet 4 x 8 x 1/2″ G1S (good 1 side) plywood cut to 22 x 75 x 2
• 2″x4″ x 8’s – 6
• Construction Adhesive
• 3″ wood screws
• 2.5″ wood screws

Tools:

• • Compound Miter Saw
  • hammer
  • Power screwdriver or Impact Driver

I had my plywood cut at Home Depot, they have this amazing crazy-huge wall saw that makes perfect clean cuts. I suggest having your local home improvement store cut your plywood for you, for a couple of reasons.

1. a 4×8 sheet of plywood is probably not going to fit in your vehicle
2. It’s hard to cut a straight line unless you have a table saw
3. I hate crooked edges.

Take both pieces of your cut plywood and place them finished side DOWN. Use construction adhesive to glue wrong sides together. Alternatively you could use 1″ plywood, and use a single piece, but you will probably have to buy the whole sheet, and 1″ good one side, gets pricey.

Cuts:

Next cut all of your 2×4’s to size.

Legs:

• 2×4’s – 42″ x 8 pieces

Sides:

• 2×4’s – 22″ x 2 pieces
• 2×4’s – 72″ x 2 pieces

Brace:

• 2×4: 2 x 22″ pieces

Build the box

Build the box with short sides overlapping long edges to achieve 22′ x 75″.  Then screw the pieces together with 3″ wood screws. Ensure that the box stays square.

Lay the top of the table (once glued and dry) on top of the box, and screw it down, with 3″ screws.  If the screws bother you, counter sink them and then use wood filler to fill them. Put one screw about every foot.

Flip the table top over. Now use the edge of the table edge to screw your two leg pieces together, as shown below:

Once you have all of the leg pieces assembled, tuck them into the corners and fasten with 3″ screws. 2 screws on each side are sufficient. Make sure they are secure and straight.

The final piece is to add a brace along each of the short ends of the bench.

And that’s it!

Super easy and pretty inexpensive. Feel free to finish as you need to. I am planning on doing some sort of finish on mine, despite the objections from Greg, who says… “it’s a workbench…”

So here is the final product. Note my old IKEA shelf on the top.

And here is what it looks like now, that I have added a slat wall to the workbench.

 

 

 

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