A Quick Tour Of a Pop-Up Backyard Woodshop

When we moved into a new home, I needed to create a woodshop with level space, good air flow, room for power tools, and most of all, protection from the elements. I determined it would need to be 200 square feet. Unfortunately, local zoning doesn’t allow for a shed that large, or even a covered deck, but a “floating” temporary deck isn’t an issue. And that’s how I conceived my 10’×20′ carport-tent workspace.

The tent has a pitched roof and flaps that go to the ground on all four sides. The deck is built from 2×8 ground-contact lumber with plywood sheeting, braced by 15 pier blocks on gravel. (Aside: Two blocks later shifted in the rain. Fixing the issue was a simple matter of pulling up one sheet of plywood, using a car jack to lift the deck and moving the blocks back into place.) For my router, chop, and table saw, I attached long shop surge strips to the tent’s vertical supports, then placed DIY’d 10-gauge multi-outlet extension cords close to the tools.

A family of rabbits has now turned the space under the deck into a summer home, and the babies poke up and around the shop, sometimes under foot. Blue jays fly in and out and pester me for food on occasion. Working outdoors is great.