ToasterWaffles

After watching Bre put together a pretty sweet looking workbench in a few minutes, we decided to finally get industrious and do it ourselves.

We started off with one slight modification to Bre’s plan: no overhang. We had our reasons for this but I’ll get to that later. We started out with the top on the floor and screwed the supports around the edge of the plywood. We then moved on to the legs. Since the legs are 2×4’s I decided to use a triangle of screws in each leg. That seemed like a relatively smooth move. Since we didn’t want the overhang we had to get an extra 2×4. The extra 2×4 meant that we could put two supports in the middle of the work surface. That made it even sturdier. If there’s one thing we value, it ruggedness. By the time we got the shelf supports in, it was even tougher.


The next move was to get the lengthwise support for the shelf going. That made the whole thing even tougher and less wobbly. Yup, it looks pretty awesome — almost like a real workbench. It even sounds good when you thump on the top of it. It sounds… sturdy. Already it could handle a gargantuan load. Awesome. I mean, look at guy! We’re not even done yet and he could dance the macarena on it!


By the time we got the bottom shelf put together it looked like a real workbench. The only problem was that shelf. It did not inspire confidence. The heaviest thing we’d want to put on that would be a bucket of paint — I don’t think it could have handled it. We’ll take care of that later, after some more awesomeness is put on it.


AWESOMENSS! That’s right ladies and germs — self-levelling concrete with “charcoal” color mixed in. We couldn’t find a concrete paddle at Home Despot so we had to go with a “mud mixer” — it got all but the largest, and smallest lumps out. What it missed, our fingers took care of.


Since it’s not every day you get to sign a work bench, well, yeah. The kitty helped too. Begrudgingly.


A few hours and some Mexican food later the concrete was firm enough that we could break down the dams. Jess started priming the whole thing and that’s where we are. Tomorrow (Monday) night we’ll paint it and try putting it in place. Hopefully it’ll still fit.