Joe Bennett: Messy garage could wait no longer

A messy garage sent columnist Joe Bennett on a journey of discovery.

It was a mess that needed fixing. But it was off-puttable, so I put it off. Other messes took precedence.

But it didn’t go away. It lurked in the periphery of consciousness, awaiting attention, awaiting the time when it climbed the mess rankings, became something beyond irksome, something un-off-puttable. That took a while.

We all have a mess tolerance threshold. It is not heritable. My mother’s was low. My father’s was low. Mine is high. I don’t make beds or mind clothes on the floor. Dust isn’t dust until I can write my name in it. Cleaning the car is a job for Mr Rain. And so on. Moreover, this particular mess was in the garage. In the garage, my mess tolerance threshold is all but orbital.

The mess was my workbench. I never did much work on it. I am no handyman. I got the thing from a school 30 years ago. It was huge and heavy with a vice on either side. For the first year, I left it outside and three of the four legs rotted, so when I finally dragged it into the garage, I sawed off the rot and propped it up on Pisan piles of wood blocks.

Over the years I have amassed a hotchpotch of tools. I have three hammers but no memory of buying any of them, drills, pliers, an abundance of screwdrivers though I only ever use one, rusted handsaws, a jigsaw that’s good ‘til the blade breaks, and a ferocious Skilsaw that I can never look at without the sense of a rising gorge that I get while watching a programme set in an emergency department when the doctor starts to peel the bloodied bandage off a wound.

All these and more were stored on the bench, lying wherever I last put them, which could have been years ago. And the mess was compounded by the nest that swallows built on the wall above, and from which I hadn’t the heart to evict them. Beautiful things, swallows. But not without bowels.

Last week, I went to pick up a set square, and found it so bonded to the surface of the work bench that I had to chisel it off. Here was the final straw. Down went the camel with a groan. I had had it with this mess.

I prised all the tools from the bench, and one by one I cleaned them with hard brush and soft, with rag and oil, and stored them in a wine box. Along the way I came across a thousand fixings, screws and hooks and washers that I had needed one of but had been obliged to buy five of, and that I had kept in the sure and certain knowledge that I’d never need them, or that if I did, I’d forget I already had them and buy five more. I binned the lot. Gleefully.

I went at the surface of the bench with a scraper. The rotten legs fell off their Pisan piles. I stared at the thing, reached a sudden decision and hauled its bulk from the garage, then hauled it out into the garden, where I went at it with a sledgehammer and smashed it to pieces. I’ll burn it this winter, all but the vices. Vices are forever.

I swept and scrubbed and sponged. Among the crud where the bench had stood I found a mummified mouse. It still looked like a mouse but weighed nothing, nothing. An hour later I had a clean space in the garage, a box of tools and a decision to make. I made it.

The kitset shelving rack I bought had a picture on the box of all the tools required for assembly. They consisted of one mallet. That’s my sort of assembly. And the shelves went together nicely at the cost of a single thumb nail. Onto them went the tools, laid out according to a formula of my own that I shall not keep to but that looks good for the moment.

While shelf-shopping I had seen a thing, a desirable thing, the very thing I would have liked to complete my revamp. It was a folding portable work bench with little adjustable knobs to grip the job being worked on, and a clamping vice down the middle and a pair of red handles to wind it shut and a reassuring German trade name. But it was $222. I could not justify $222.

Reader, I justified $222. Somehow. And once an hour, on the hour, I rise from this seat and go out into the garage just to stand and drool. The shelves of tools, the pristine work bench, the Platonic ideal of a handyman spot, a place too good to use. A made bed.

I’d send you a photo, but you’d swoon.