shop design help please

Is there any chance you could put the vehicles outside? If your wife is anything like mine the chances of this happening are nil. If I had tried that with my wife I would be outside in the weather before her vehicle would be. I tried putting my truck in the lower garage along with my tools until I finally got tired of constantly moving everything around and trying to make room for the truck (basically it is an L-shaped single garage) and just resigned myself to putting the truck outside. As a bonus it gave me more room for tools/shop furniture as well.

But if putting the vehicles outside is not an option you may want to take a look at this shop planner. It might help you with your tool placement.

-- With God's help all things are possible- even woodworking. Woodworking is not just a hobby, it is an (expletive deleted) expensive hobby.

I have roughly the same size garage that I’m working with now. I have no where near the amount of tools you have. My wife and I have agreed that one vehicle must be able to be parked in the garage at any time and the other car port I can use as a shop. The only rule that I try to keep is that I must be able to park that other vehicle inside within a few minutes. So that means everything must be easily moveable. I haven’t come up with a complete solution yet, but I tried the Grizzly site and it really didn’t help me much as I have alot of oddities in my garage such as two steps to the door, a column along one wall, 11’ ceilings, etc. My plan is to use three rows of french cleats around the perimeter so I can move cabinets, shelves, etc. And the workbench along the wall is high enough to roll my tools (table saw) and toolboxes underneath.

i think Sketchup would be your best bet, but also Closetmaid had their closet visual planner than can also do garages.

I have a garage about the same size as yours that I use for my shop. My Contractor’s saw with 30” Unifence, bandsaw, thickness planer, and edge sander are each on a mobile base and against the walls. When I need to work out there, both vehicles go outside and the macinery I need gets wheeled out into the open space. I wouldn’t want a vehicle in there while I was working anyway, it would just get dusty. It’s all a pain in the backside but it works. A dedicated shop would be much more easier, efficient, and enjoyable.

Over the course of two years I moved from a 1500 sq ft shop to a 400 sq ft shop—mostly.

There are many, many examples in the books and magazines about how to use shop space efficiently and make due with a little space.

To get started I would do this:

• Air compressors? Consolidate to one, with central plumbing. Hang the compressor over head on the wall, or can you locate it outside the shop, like in a basement?
• Focus on placement (while you are working) of the tool and surface you use most, with an emphasis on how you will deal with large sheet goods since that process usually requires the most lateral space as well as length.
• Store unused benchtop tools in the bases of the tools you use the most. Flip top rolling bases or rolling bases that accept a tool’s bottom “plate” for each tool work well. Store unused benchtop tools in a cabinet.
• Roll tool bases and storage under wall-mounted worksurfaces when not in use.
• Use fold-down or fold-up work surfaces.

Someone else suggested sketchup. I second that.