51 power tools, two workbenches and a tractor
In a town where many people don’t even own a mower, my little garage comfortably contains a tractor, complete with chipper-shredder and trailer. Let me explain.
Fifteen years ago, we bought a sprawling, overgrown and weed-tormented property in the hills of Pasadena. The one-car garage immediately was clogged with my collection of tools. I merely had the basics for automotive repair and carpentry, plumbing, electrical and masonry projects. For the yard I had the usual -- a power mower and an assortment of shovels, saws and pruning shears.
I also had a mortgage that precluded any thought of hiring help. But, alas, as the yard grew stronger and more out of control, my ability to keep up seemed to be diminishing.
Enter the tractor-mower, an 18-horsepower vehicle with a 54-inch mower deck.
With it I bought a set of earth-breaking attachments to conquer the canyon where I tend vegetables. I also bought an 8-horsepower chipper-shredder to gobble up the branches that come down by the dozens and a 12-cubic-foot cart to move tools and cuttings from place to place.
I soon found that a large tool such as a tractor -- the aircraft carrier of the yard -- needs to be surrounded by a fleet of accessories. A compressor and portable air tank came first, to minister to the 24-inch tires.
When lifting the earth-breaking attachments using the hand lever became too taxing, I bought a welding machine to build a hydraulic ram. Then I added a hydraulic log-splitter that weighs 300 pounds and could be moved only with a half-ton chain hoist.
Finally, all this heavy equipment needs to be hauled in for service. That problem has led to my most extravagant solution, an ingenious street-legal folding trailer that unhinges from the back wall.
As the inventory expanded, it became entangled with the detritus of multiple jobs, both completed and ongoing. The smallest task became a nightmare of lifting, stacking and rearranging, just to find the one necessary tool.
By now, my property would look like Old MacDonald’s if I hadn’t looked into the growing jumble one day and seen an overarching principle: Every hour spent tending to the condition of my shop frees at least two extra hours for actual yard work. Once I understood that, it still took me a few weekends of intense spatial and logistical thinking to work out the algorithms that keep my shop efficient and expandable, letting me continue to squeeze new tools into the same space.
I can summarize them in four subsidiary principles: portability, layering, line of sight and thematic packaging. In short, every item has its spot. If I can’t remember where, I can find it by deduction.
I have rejected the conventional notion of a broad expanse of work space. A large surface is nothing more than a place to accumulate things. My workbench is a slab of plywood set atop folding sawhorses. Disassembled, the whole thing leans against a side wall, taking up only 2 inches.
With one exception, nothing in my shop is fixed. Take my most time-honored tool, the 30-year-old Craftsman 10-inch radial-arm saw. It came with an impressive metal stand. It now stows sideways on a metal cabinet that can roll anywhere.
The back of the garage is organized in vertical and horizontal strata. Things seldom used -- the trailer and the log-splitter -- are at the back. Those needed every month or two come next. The tractor, needed every weekend, goes in last.
Shelves overhang the big equipment. The top shelf holds large boxes, each with the sundries of a particular system: irrigation, landscape lighting, painting and so on. The lower rank contains hand tools.
Things that have a tendency to become lost forever, such as pulleys, springs and funnels, have places along one wall so they can be found with a quick scan. The opposing wall holds long-handled garden tools.
My four chain saws and weed cutter nestle atop a castoff kitchen cabinet that holds fertilizers and small gardening tools. A 16-foot folding ladder hangs above the portable workbench. Lumber, pipes and assorted hardware hang from the rafters.
The one thing that never moves is the vise. To accommodate mine, I built another workbench 8 feet long and 12 inches deep. It’s also where I use the grinder and drill press. The shallow design minimizes clutter and leaves clearance for my car.
Did I not mention the little trick that makes everything work? The car must be parked in the garage every weekday. Not that I care to keep it covered. Its function in the garage is as a place-holder, to maintain that passageway and work space needed for the simplest weekend job.
I can’t claim my garage is orderly in the manner of a professional workshop. There is always a sprinkling of odds and ends that haven’t yet become big enough problems to merit packaging. And it’s far from a clean room. Yard dust fills every cranny.
But I’m not ashamed to call it the archetypal adaptation of farm power to suburbia. It helps me do the work of 10 laborers simply because I have every tool I need and can get it operational in five minutes or less.
