Making a garage worktop

Looks great. Toaster, kettle and a bed are all that’s missing.

Can’t have luxury items like that when you need the plug sockets for power tools. Be careful not to overload the circuit.

Aye. I don’t think the garage electrical supply is rated that highly. It’s all new (less than ten years old I’d say, done before we moved in) with a dedicated trip box. I then had all new plug sockets and wiring installed as part of the refurb.

We have tripped it more than once though with a dehumidifier, 2500w heater and a smaller heater. That’s pretty heavy and not something we need do again so I’m hoping it’s no bother.

Though we do have that fridge to turn on :slight_smile:

The plug was wired as you describe, yes :sunglasses:

Fixed the bowing. Brackets and shims to the rescue :upside_down_face:

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I bow to your ingenuity

Have you considered solar panels on the roof to supplement your power requirements?

Yes/no. Tesla rang up just before Lockdown Part I and got us interested in their new energy plan with Octopus Energy which installs solar and battery. It’s still something we’d like to look at when things calm down a bit, though It almost certainly wouldn’t include panels on the garage roof, which is a good place to put some, though even then the garage electrics would need uplifting to supply more power.

Putting in solar just to the garage; I hadn’t really considered it. I’m not sure it makes much sense to spend the money on the panels, supporting electronics and then upgrade the fuse box, etc just for the fridge and relatively infrequent times I use electricity in the garage. Better to spend that money on upgrading the house to solar + battery and the feed into the garage I think.

Panels used to be a good deal with the subsidies but I remember a good number of cases where people took essentially loans out (credit agreements?) To install them. Be wary of anyone with a deal to install the panels for you

The issue was that some clause then made the roof essentially part of the agreement and people couldn’t do work that interfered with the panels (from what I remember extension but in some cases even repairs)

Not saying the octopus plan is the same and they do seem a decent company (I’m with them for 2yrs now) but just check wordings carefully

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Installed Linux on the ten year old iMac in the workshop… macOS was starting to get unsupported. Ubuntu has given it a new lease of life. It’s blazing fast even on this ten year old i7/16gb/256gb ssd iMac.



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So I’m not the best with computers so forgive me :joy:

Have an old MacBook Pro (2012) that runs slow and thinking of using it for the Garage workshop…

Will this work too :man_shrugging:

Photo of said workshop…still build in progress

Very nice build there @Curtis! I think your floor came out much better than mine. I like the corner workbench unit as well.

To answer your question, yes, you can. How much faster it’ll make it depends… if it has a HDD in it, i.e. a spinning disk for storage, as opposed to the newer SSD (solid state disk) then it’s worth swapping this out with an SSD if you want to give it a massive boost in speed. SSD’s go from £30 or so.

Here’s a guide on how to install Ubuntu (Linux) on a mac:

Specifically, the " How to install Linux on a Mac: Replacing OS X/macOS with Linux" section.

For that price it’s worth a punt I suppose! I’ll look up it’s spec and see

Only want it to run CAD/CAM software and internet searches for stuff in the workshop

Still need to build the rest of it as it has the tool board and cupboards to go above it

As much as I love your custom wood build not got time to do that nor the money/skills for the tools to do so

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I can’t take credit for the floor, had a local company come in and do it for not much more then what it would of cost me to buy the stuff, hire the tools to prep the floor and the specialist knowledge of how to do it too :joy:

I think that I have a dose if garage floor envy. It looks so smoooooth. Unlike the moon scape in ours.

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Mine was similar prior, stained, chipped & damaged, dusty concrete. If you knelt on it you’d be covered in dust, now I could eat my dinner off of it :rofl:

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So workshop update…

Finally got round to finishing the cabinets and squaring the tools I have away, now know what I need and can start the process of more tool investment :grin:

Turns out I can’t run the program I wanted to on Linux so will have to buy a decent cheap laptop for the workshop


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Cool. Love it.

Nice work Curtis. What program out of interest?

Fusion 360 CAD software