THE GARAGE TODAY
I’m calling it ‘The 12-Gauge Garage’ because when I built a steel-topped bench for it, I discovered Strong Hold Cabinets, a Wisconsin company that makes ridiculously strong cabinets. They claim that they’re the strongest metal cabinets you can buy. They’re rated to hold 1900 pounds per shelf. That’s definitely stronger than I have any need for in my garage (and watch out, they’re expensive, too). But the one that was holding up the steel plate for my bench -- well, it just felt good to open and close the thing. Is that crazy?
This is how it looked when I bought it.
Here it is painted and with a 510-pound bench on top of it.
I liked using that cabinet so much that I started keeping an eye out for other used Strong Hold cabinets on eBay.
With a lot of patience, and letting about 50 of the cabinets go to other buyers (I’m cheap, there’s no two ways about it), I finally lucked into a 4’ wide model for $62. This is a 760-pound cabinet that lists for (I think) $2,300 new. I snapped it up, and even got a little less cheap when I sourced a second one for $148. Then I got a Lyon cabinet for a shallower space near my metal bench (it’s made of 14-gauge steel, not 12-gauge). Including the short Strong Hold cabinet I’d already bought, I had about $600 in the four steel cabinets for my garage. It’s about 2,300 pounds of cabinetry.
Getting them to my house and getting them installed into my garage is a very long story I won’t tell here. I did document
one bad day when I basically knocked one of the 760-pounc cabinets onto my Porsche. Yeah, you read that right. I ended up not hurting the car too badly, but still -- a pretty bone-headed moment.
Did I mention that they’re heavy? Each of the doors on the 4’ wide cabinets weighs 85 pounds. They open and close easily, but it has the feel of opening a bank safe.
THE BASIC FACTS
The garage is small -- 20’x22’. I store one car in it and use the rest as my home shop. In addition to the normal home and car repairs, I do some woodworking projects and some welding projects in it. It’s not lit like an operating room. I don’t have beer signs, gas pumps or televisions in it. It’s built to remind me of working with my father in his shop in Chicago, where I grew up.
I'll take it wall by wall. In my initial clean-up of the garage, I added a fold-down table for wood projects. It had pre-drilled holes for my router table and was at the same height as the other bench in the garage so I could use it for cutting long pieces of lumber. I liked it so much that when I took up welding, I added a second, steel table for welding. Both of them fold up along the first wall of the garage so I can park my car there. But when I back the car out I can lower one or both of them for work. It’s a really handy thing to have when you’re working in such a small space.
