Not exactly a woodworking question, but related. I bought an old house and there’s a nice spot in the basement for me to set up my shop, but it’s completely unfinished. Cinder block walls and concrete floor. As far as I know, if I want to actually finish it, I need a permit and inspections, which seems like a lot of hassle. All I really want is to seal the floor (not sure how best to do that) and have a way to hang cabinets. Do I just drill into the cinder block? It feels weird to put a bunch of holes in the foundation of the house. Or do I put up some basic framing to hang things off of? Or does that start to require permits? Any advice? Just not sure how best to proceed.
I have a hobbiest’s woodshop in a portion of my unfinished basement. No cabinets, but I do have a 15 foot or so long workbench with a miter saw in the middle of it. It has a few pull out shelves and this gives me a lot of storage. I also have a very overbuilt 4’x5’ table on wheels that has two shelves below the top. I initially intended this to be an outfeed table for my table saw. My basement has a drop ceiling, painted cement walls, and a linoleum floor.
Others have touched on permits and framing, so I’ll leave that alone.
Dust collection and air filtration are going to be must dos. I have the harbor freight dust collector connected to both my table saw and my miter saw via eye with blast doors so I can funnel 100% of available flow to the tool in use. The miter itself sits inside a pretty large hood. This works fairly well, but it’s not perfect. You’re going to want to build some kind of filter box (a cube or rectangle with filters on four sides and a fan pulling air through them, into the box, and out). Here’s an example.
I guess I hadn’t really considered just building tall cabinets instead of hanging things, that’s probably the simplest of all. I have dust collection taken care of, but ventilation is on my list. There’s a door and two (terrible) windows, so I can make it happen, but it’s not there yet. I am also thinking of adding a vent to the ductwork that runs through the room, but without insulation, that seems like it might do more harm than good.