On their home blog, Just Measuring Up, Ash and Eileen chronicle the projects in their lives, from simple repair and maintenance jobs to arts and crafts projetcts to more ambitious home improvements. Recently, one of those projects was building this folding workbench for their garage.
The bench they designed and built is sturdy enough to be a serious work surface, but the entire thing can also be stowed away, making it desirable for multi-use spaces. Ash and Eileen needed to be able to use the garage sometimes for their car. This bench gives them the flexibility to do that.
The first thing that Ash did was to do some research on folding workbenches and then to draft a simple set of TinkerCad drawings so that he could work out the details of his build.
As you can see in the diagrams, the table would be supported with 3 wall mounted legs. Each leg would rest on hinges, allowing them to swing inwards and lay flat against the wall. With the legs folded in, the tabletop (also resting on hinges) would fold downwards to lay on top of the legs. I really liked this floating table design and was eager to start work on it.
The workbench construction consisted of 3 main parts – tabletop, legs, and wall mounts. When all 3 pieces were completed, it was just a matter of securing them to each other with hinges. So first I started with the tabletop. I opted to use several planks of 2 x 8 and 2 x 4 wood for the top, much like a picnic table. I liked the look because it blended in well with my existing garage shelves (including a sliding shelf behemoth I made a few months ago). I first cut the planks to size (85” long).
To finish things off, Ash beveled the edges of the benchtop for a nice finish and used small gate bolts to lock the swinging legs into place so that they wouldn’t get accidentally knocked by someone’s leg while in use.
This whole bench-building journey began after Ash found and installed the pegboard and tool organizers on the wall behind the bench. It looked like it needed a bench. So he designed and built one. Now he and Eileen are going to see what else needs to be done to organize their tools on the pegboard.
See the entire project post here.
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