Building a home bikeshop. Part 1

The last few years have been a struggle, trying to set up a space to store and work on my bikes. Constantly moving around from basement suite, to basement suite, nothing quite worked. So in 2009 my girlfriend and I stepped up to the plate and bought a house. A big step financially and in our relationship.

But it also means I finally get to build a shop just for my bikes.Back when I was living at home, everything was easy. Had a huge garage to keep bikes, and My Dad had built a massive workbench that I could use when I was working on bikes and my vehicle. When I finally moved out, basement suites didn't quite give me that luxury, bikes where usually stuffed in the corner, leaning against a wall or upside down while I worked on them.

Before we moved into our house Odrey and I were living in her 550 sq. ft studio apartment. Cramped was an understatement, we hardly had room to breathe once my bikes were in there:


February 28th we took possession of our 2100 sq. ft house. The basement was mostly unfinished, so I had lots to chose from when it came to building a shop.




First step was to get the flooring down, I wanted something smoother and easier to clean than a cold concrete floor. I bought some garage coating 2 part epoxy to put down, this would seal the floor and make cleanup a lot easier. It took about 10 hours total including drying time, the process was fairly easy, and I'm pretty stoked with the outcome.


Now that the floor was down I can start working on the shop itself. I needed to get a lot into this room so a bit of careful planning was required. I wanted a full 8 ft. workbench as well as a pegboard wall, shelves for gear, a full stand up toolbox, 4 bikes, and a bunch of tires.

This is gonna be awesome.

So now I can get started framing the wall out to start on the bench and pegboard section of the shop. I decided to build the wall off the existing outside wall, and foundation. This way I can build the bench off a wood structure rather than try to Hilti into 50 year old concrete.


Once the wall was up, the pegboard and shelves got a coat of paint the room was starting to come together. I got the countertop from a used building supply store called ReStore for $40. I added a strip of Plywood just below the pegboard so I would have something to attach the electrical to.




Next I will start getting the tools on the peg board, bikes on the wall, shelving for gear, and I have a little bit of electrical work to do.

Check out the forum thread on home workshops here too.

Total cost so far:

Floor Epoxy $100
Lumber $100
Pegboard $18
Countertop $40

Darryl Bartlett is proudly supported by:

Devinci Bikes
Pinkbike.com
SRAM
Truvativ
Avid
RockShox
DT Swiss
ODI
WTB
Troy Lee Designs
Straitline Components
Gamut USA

Checkers or wreckers!

-Stay tuned for part 2 in the coming weeks.

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