Midwest Woodworker

As an adult, I bought my first house at the age of 22, and with only a few hand tools (hammer, screwdrivers, etc) and some paint I made it better.  The usual home-owner projects of course led me into buying more hand tools and then a few power tools.  I sold that first house for a profit and bought a little bigger one.  Then I did the same thing over again - fixed it up and sold it for a profit - to afford my third house.  That house, shown below, had a 2.5 car detached garage that would eventually become my first woodworking shop (once I insulated and rewired it of course!).  

For years I had been watching This Old House and New Yankee Workshop, and sitting there in my living room I began to feel more and more that “I could do that”.  So with some Christmas money I had saved, I bought a Delta 36-600 table saw from Lowe’s for $350.  I stayed up half the night assembling it and once I made my first cut with it I was hooked.  That was 1996.  Soon after, I rewired and insulated that garage, bought a kerosene heater, and started planning how to get more tools.

Above is a shot inside that first shop.  Notice that I covered all but the top 2 feet of the walls with ˝” OSB.  I loved the "woody" feel that this gave to the shop.  By wrapping a 2' band of peg board all the way around the top of the walls, I had a TON of space to hang tools, jigs, patterns, etc.  You can see just the top of my first table saw in the photo above.