Opening Up

Although this doesn't give the full picture of how it was originally, here is the view as it was from the washer

Here is how it looks now

Yep, used to be a wall there with the old built in workbench, base cabinet and storage cabinet. Thursday and Friday nights, after work, I buckled down and tore it all out. Took some time as I had to fit everything in the SUV to take to the dump, so I was not just hacking and slashing. Plus I recycle as much of the metal nails/scres etc as I can get out. Saves the town money by throwing it in the metal dumpster instead of the demo dumpster - and saves me money since I am charged by weight to throw stuff in the demo dumpster. Oh yeah, and any "clean" wood, I can throw in the brush pile for free too.

From the garage door - I couldn't see the stairs from the door before.

It really hit me when I walked down the stairs this morning and could see the door to the garage! If you look at the concrete, you can see the discolored areas where everything used to be. The wall ran to a doorway beside the stairs and workbench/cabinetry were on the outside of the wall.

That shelf unit was inside the storage cabinet and it was a challenge to get it out in one piece. It obviously used to set on the floor as there is a lot of water damage from the lowest shelf down (and residual damage between the two lower shelves). When I started the demo, I had no idea that shelving unit was in there.

The unit rested on 12" wide boards, so it was, in total, 81" tall with two sets of doors, another small unit built on the left side of it (can be seen in 1st pic) and then a base cabinet built into it behind (seen in 1st pic), with counter attached and projecting several feet to the wall beside the door- arrgghh, I wish I had better pictures of before. The top of the cabinet was attached to the beam that can be seen in the picture, but next to the door from the stairs.

Anyway, I'm hoping to recondition the shelves as the wood is amazing, being of 12"-16" wide planks. The back is two rough cut planks; 16" and 14.5". The sides and shelves are 12" sanded planks. It is a real shame about the rot and damage to the bottom, but if I cut off between the two bottom shelves, perhaps I can sand the rest down and give it new life. It is still very sturdy and well made, so I have to try anyway.

Comments

[Cop Car]

There is so much more flexibility in use of space when there are no walls to worry about. The shelf unit sounds/looks like a great find. Good work!