Hacks to Make Your Workshop Mobile

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A hand truck or wheelbarrow can easily be converted into portable work surfaces.

If there's one thing I’ve had to do to improve my DIY activities, it's been make my setup mobile. I’ve learned that to accomplish anything from the smallest repair job to the biggest overhaul, I need the means to quickly and easily move tools and materials around a house or yard. Without that, it's all frustration.

But along with mobility, I’ve learned that it's crucial to keep tools and materials off the floor (or ground) and neatly organized. I’ve learned this the hard way, by losing and misplacing tools, hardware, and accessories. I’ve stepped on stuff and broken it, lost it in the grass, stumbled over things, and kicked it under nearby furniture because it was on the floor. Leason learned: A good hack is better than stumbling around or making countless trips to ferry tools back and forth. A hack doesn't have to be perfect nor an end-all solution. All it has to do is help. That's the case here. Both hacks shown below are works in progress. They're good in their own right, but they also provide me with ideas to arrive at better mobility projects.

Before we explain these two hacks, here are some tools to help make your worksite more portable.

You never know when or where the next great idea will come from. In the case of this makeshift rolling cart, I had four exterior light fixtures to install and a bunch of other similar small jobs on a punch list. Casting about the garage and shop, I came up with a triangular piece of plywood (each leg is 17 inches long and the hypotenuse measures 24 inches). I used 1-1/4 inch drywall screws to attach it to another piece of scrap—a hunk of 2 x 4 measuring about 34 inches long. Once I had those two pieces fastened, I took a 14 x 16 inch piece of scrap plywood and screwed it into the end of the vertical 2 x 4 so that the plywood formed a platform.

Note that the top platform fits to the curving back of the hand truck by means of two quick cuts at 45-degrees that remove the back corners of the platform. This allows a snug fit to the hand truck's curving back brace.

This simple setup gives you the ultimate hack trifecta: storage, mobility and organization. It's amazing what you can fit on or in a 5-gallon bucket.

I had a handful of balusters to cut for an exterior handrail so I stashed a small miter saw and various carpentry tools in a wheel barrow and laid a quarter-sheet panel of 1/2-inch MDF over the top of it. I wheeled the tools out to where I needed to work and set up shop. I put the MDF on the wheel barrow and the miter saw on top of that. This is a rather low working surface, as the MDF is only about 25 inches above the ground, but it was still better than kneeling on the ground.

I should note that this setup is not appropriate for heavy cuts, but it worked perfectly for a few small cuts; I didn't even clamp or screw the miter saw to the MDF panel—I was careful not to let the saw head bounce back and it worked just fine. If you have a wheelbarrow with dual front wheels, you’ll find it forms an even more robust platform than this single-wheel model.

Roy Berendsohn has worked for more than 25 years at Popular Mechanics, where he has written on carpentry, masonry, painting, plumbing, electrical, woodworking, blacksmithing, welding, lawn care, chainsaw use, and outdoor power equipment. When he's not working on his own house, he volunteers with Sovereign Grace Church doing home repair for families in rural, suburban and urban locations throughout central and southern New Jersey.

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