This article outlines the design, planning, construction, and internal fit-out of a shed at my property in Australia. I have a varied range of interests, including machining, welding, casting, robotics (CNC, electronics), woodwork, and composites. Over the years, I have made do by storing my tools in garden sheds and working either on the veranda or in the driveway. When we purchased this property, one of the selection criteria was a decent-sized backyard to permit a dedicated shed for me to work in. I’ve tried to keep the concepts outlined in this article fairly general in their direction, so it will fall upon anyone looking to copy design elements to tailor them to their local conditions and regulations.
Design
The shed design involved the floor plan, storage options, height of door, mezzanines, and hot-works area. It started with determining what space I had available on my house block, and the constraints of shed construction imposed by the local council and planning regulations. I then started modelling shed layouts using grid paper and some small-scale footprints of the machines I expect to use — milling machine, lathe, shaper, drill press, bench for desktop machines, and so on.
Several layouts were considered, and the one settled on was based on a long, narrow shed with metalworking tools along one side and woodwork and general work on the other side. The metalwork side was also designed so that long stock coming out of the lathe headstock would pass over the shaper/drill-press area.
Another feature incorporated into this layout was that all grinding works — bench grinder, tool and cutter (T&C) grinder, etc. — were located far from the slides of the big lathe and milling machine, and separated from the slides of the desktop machines by a partition wall. Photo 1a shows the design sketches used to determine the floor plan.
Separate areas
I dabble in electronics — microprocessors, robotics, and CNC — so
