Brand new workbench for 12 bucks

Ahhhhhh!

That’s how I feel right now after getting the basement garage FINALLY all sorted out. And to top it off, I finally have a proper place for all of my tools. I built myself a workbench today for the garage and moved all of my tools and work supplies in there. Two trips to the dump yesterday to clear out the rest of the junk in the garage sure helped.

Total cost for my rockin’ new workbench? 12 bucks.

I saved the 2 old cabinets on top from the old kitchen back in November during demolition and bought three 2x6s yesterday at Home Depot ($12) to build the frame of the bench, in addition to using scrap 2x4s I had around the house and plywood sheets for the lower shelf from demo of the upstairs sleeping porch.

But the crown jewel was the laminate-covered kitchen countertop that I found in our alley, leaning against someone’s fence with all their trash.  I wasn’t sure if they were actually giving it away, but after it sat there for a week or two, I grabbed it and stuck it under my porch a month or two ago.

Today after church I built a frame for it and dropped it right on top. I spent the rest of the day getting the garage cleaned and organized; sealing the water-damaged bricks that have started turning to powder (Behr Low-Lustre Sealer works like a charm) and sweeping out the entire garage before organizing it all and moving my tools out from under the stairs in the basement.

The garage was full of a bunch of leftover construction materials, including the original trim removed during the kitchen renovation. I told my contractor Rudy to save it all and I’d go through it and see what I could repurpose elsewhere. (Turned out to be about 10% of it. The rest went to the dump.)

But that wasn’t all. We still have a few things from the old owner that I said I’d hang onto for him, mostly consisting of his mattress and boxspring — I can’t imagine anyone using it again knowing how dusty it is in there — and odds and ends that he couldn’t get in his car when he was leaving for the last time.

Anyway, I love the new workbench. My dad would be proud, I’m sure.

I forgot to take a “before” picture of the garage at the start of the weekend, but let’s just say that it looked terrible and leave it at that. That’s the old owner’s stuff in the back corner, as well as the three doors I’ve removed from the house that might get repurposed: old pantry door, kitchen/DR swinging door, kitchen-to-sleeping porch door.

UPDATED: Oh look, I found a photo from before we closed. Gross.