I build furniture on weekends in a one-car garage in Minneapolis. During the week I work in facilities administration, a role that has encouraged my appreciation for things that are easy to find, maintain and put back. My woodworking began with a shelf and a borrowed set of tools, and my workshop still has to leave room for everyday storage.
One-Car Garage documents useful projects and the space around them. I write about planning, organizing a modest bench, learning from offcuts and making furniture for real objects rather than an imagined catalogue room. I prefer a finished, useful shelf to a very impressive collection of unopened equipment.
I share projects honestly, including decisions that made assembly awkward or a piece less convenient than expected. My interests outside the garage include community gardens, repairing bicycles and making a substantial breakfast for anyone willing to help move a bookcase.
There was nowhere to stand in my workshop. I had a bench, tools, three promising projects and enough offcuts to suggest I was preserving a forest by installments. To reach one useful object, I moved
The shelf began with a photograph of a beautiful shelf. This was my first mistake. The photograph contained three tasteful objects. Our household contains cookbooks of several heights, a plant with ambitions and a ceramic
