Built like a sh*t brickhouse - home workshop blank canvas (aka The Bike Hole)

Moving back to Bristol has brought many joys. The hills! The rain! Seeing people I actually know for the first time in two years!

We found a lovely little flat by the park, which has a mysterious door in the back garden... leading to a big old brick storehouse that the landlords hadn’t opened in a few years.

With a bit of persuading, they’ve cleared it out and given us the key. It’s home to some proper gnarly spiders and the roof is a little leaky, but it’s a really big space that deserves more than just being used for bike storage.

I want to build out a little home workshop, but I’m not exactly sure where to start. Any suggestions are welcome, but I’ll use this thread to track where it goes over the coming months. Anyone know how to build a workbench?

Oh, and what’s with the name? Well, I have what they used to call Aspergers and now probably goes by ASD. That’s all sorts of fun, but one way it manifests is that I often fall into temporary obsessions about very specific, usually bike-related things (the last one was finding the perfect front rack for my LHT). When I get like this, I’m basically wholly mentally absent for hours at a time, I forget to eat and can’t focus on anything else until the conundrum is solved. My partner describes that as the bike hole, so now I have a place where I can go do this in peace. I’ll keep a snack stash down there, just to be sensible.

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That’s an amazing space, rather envious:)

Make sure you bring in music!
Lots of plans for benches all over the net, many are fairly straight forward to build.
Check the DIY thread, lots of help there, pro and amateur.

Anyone know how to build a workbench?

Consider your use case first. A lot of the US YouTube ones are very overbuilt and whatever they say the designs need serious tools. Have a search / ask in the diy thread.

I'd seriously consider having a look at this ebay seller's stock:
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/272062749766
Pretty sure they'll tweak stuff to your spec - having it the right size to move outside would be handy. As it sounds like you're renting I'd be ever more inclined to go that route and attach heavy duty wheels for maximum current and future flexibility.

Also worth pointing out there is a shortage of a lot of building stock so now is an expensive time to build things.

Learn how to build a sturdy work bench. Fairly simple first project and it's lovely working on something you built.

In a fun revelation, it turns out a neighbour was throwing out the corpse of a hefty folding workbench they'd made from lumber and OSB. Looks hardly used but the hinges weren't up to the weight, clearly - will chuck some brackets on and we'll be in business.

More urgently, it seems that the place is ridden with some of the chunkiest spider friends I've ever seen. Mass murder may be in order but open to less aggressive options to evict them.

the hinges weren't up to the weight

Check out how Charlie DIY did his hinges:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PTN3EmLiYdg

(the rest of that series is also worth a watch)