Garage workbench Build: Day Two

Today was Saturday so I worked on the workbench off and on all day in between playing with the kids.

This afternoon we went shopping at Menards for supplies for this project. I re-learned two lessons from this trip but I doubt they will stick. :-)

Lesson One: Always make sure you bring a shopping list when you go shopping, when you don't you will forget things you meant to buy and buy things you didn't intend to.

Lesson Two: (Made worse by forgetting lesson one) Things always cost more than you expect.

In particular I decided at the last minute to go ahead and buy the metal insert for the slatwall, I might not have if Menards had any of the Melamine Covered slatwall instead of just the white painted stuff, as I think from the description that the Melamine covered stuff might be a better particle board. These inserts cost almost a hundred dollars and the 4 by 8 sheet of slatwall was only 40 something, so the inserts to strenghen the slatwall cost twice what the slatwall itself did. I don't think I will regret this decision though as with the metal inserts I will be able to hang just about anything I might want to on that wall without worrying about breaking the slatwall.

On the forgetting things side I forgot to buy electrical wire the first time I went shopping, which was in many ways the whole reason for this trip as I needed to work on the wiring for the electrical outlets next. I went by Home Depot later since it is closer to my house and picked up a hundred foot roll.

So at this point I have outlet boxes in the wall, and have all the suplies I need to build the actual workbench. Getting a light to go above it and a bench vise will have to wait for later.

I think I am going to really like having a workbench for all kinds of small projects. I can't tell you how many times today while working on building the workbench I wished I had a workbench to work on. :-)

I ended up using a microphone case I have sitting in the garage from my time working backstage in music theatre productions as a basic work table.

I had to cut 4.5 inches of the slatwall to have it line up on a stud, so I am going to have to cut that much off the end of all the metal inserts from one side. Ugh. Oh well, its going to be worth it in the end.