Weekend Activities

So typically on a Monday morning I'd be uploading bike photos and blogging about an epic ride...however I felt lazy this weekend and I didn't ride. Saturday was spent preparing for this month's edition of Vino Club (we hosted, so it meant lots of cleaning, shopping, and cooking). I also made a trip to the corner hardware store to pick up some rubber carpet runner pieces to protect the carpet underneath my new indoor bike storage rack.

Sunday morning was chilly which never helps my cycling motivation, and I also I felt lazy, like I needed a day to unwind. Too much red wine the night before, perhaps? After a slow start, I decided that I'd at least spend the day completing a project that I'd been wanting to finish since we'd moved into our new condo a couple of months ago -- building a compact workbench to fit against a particular wall in our half of the garage we share. I wanted a place to mount a bench vice for various projects, as well as a bench to hold my wheel truing stand and various other tools. There's enough space in front of our car to set up my folding bike work stand and work on a bike; now I'll have this bench on the other side to keep the tools I need close at hand. The bench is constructed from 2x4s and laminated MDF sourced from Home Depot, who sell it in 24"x48" panels and cut it down to the 40" size I needed. I based the design on free plans I found at Hammerzone.com and modified it slightly to make a compact bench (40" W x 24" D x 37" H) to fit the space, and also to provide a 1.5" front overhang on the work surface to facilitate clamping parts. The lower shelf will provide miscellaneous storage, hopefully someday I'll store a small tabletop drill press down there along with some bike tools. I still need to mount the (pictured) vice, level the surface (the garage floor slopes away from the wall), and hook up a power strip to get some electricity, but the basic structure is done and I'm pretty happy with how it turned out.