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Hola fellow builders. In about a month I'll be moving to a slightly smaller garage in FL. In order to compensate I'm going to move one of my benches into one of the extra bedrooms for a clean work area for detail work and the like. If any of you have a similar setup all set up I'd be interested to see it to get some ideas before I get the Lowe's in FL.

Thanks in advance

Joey--

I have a space in my walkout basement that houses my workbench and a lot of my storage, and then I have a separate room in which I keep all the stationary power tools. So, it is not that different from what you plan to do. Yours involves a longer walk between the two than I have.

I would recommend not thinking of it as clean versus dirty, so much as hand tool versus stationary tool. Both rooms have the capacity to get dirty; the machine room just has more prodigious outputs of crud (chips, sawdust, etc.).

Here are some suggestions:

1. Get rid of any carpet in the spare bedroom
2. Keep a shop vac, with strong filtration, in the spare bedroom
3. Put your main workbench in the spare bedroom
4. Limit your RH control to the spare bedroom
5. Store all your work in progress in the spare bedroom
6. Put all your stationary power tools in the garage, each on wheels
7. Only keep the smallest of benches in the garage, also on wheels
8. Only take things out to the garage to use the stationary machines, then get right back to the spare bedroom
9. Decide where you will use routers; there are good arguments for using them in both spaces

Basically, this has your real workshop in the spare bedroom, with all the heavy machinery in the garage, and you spend the minimum amount of time possible in the garage to just use the machines, then scoot back to the spare bedroom for everything else. This makes RH control easier and more effective, and it has you not suffering the MISERABLE heat and humidity in a garage in Florida any more than you have to.

This is just the way I would do it. Others might disagree.

I actually work out of my childhood bedroom at the moment... After college and then going to Spain for a while to study classical guitar making I moved back home at 21 to in an effort to save money. My fathers large basement workshop is far too difficult to control humidity wise so I brought my work bench upstairs and do the bulk of my building 5 feet from the bed in which I sleep every night.

Cleanliness isn't too hard to control considering I mostly use chisels, scrapers, planes, files, etc. for my work while any routing or band sawing is done in the shop downstairs. It's honestly not too different from the separate "clean" and "dirty" rooms used by the two luthiers I studied under in Spain and helps to keep not only the space but the building process more clean and precise IMO.

As stated above, remove any carpeting from the floor and the biggest piece of advice I can offer for keeping your space, your work, and your headspace as clean as possible is to put things away and sweep/vacuum as soon as you're done with an operation. It makes the work space consistently dust free and keeps you working at a higher level

I started building guitars in a Residence Inn kitchen in my suite in Sunnyvale California. My next shop was a spare bathroom in my condo. Built a platform over the tub, wood storage in the shower, spray booth in the toilet closet....

My next shop was in a spare bedroom with white carpet in my condo. I bought a very good vac, a Festool HEPA vac and was pretty strict about using tools that were very clean such as the Festool ROS complete with hose to the vac. Some strategically placed mats over the white carpet and I never damaged the place and dirt never was an issue.

The single most important piece of advice that I can offer Joey is a great, HEPA shop vac and tools that can be integrated with the vac. Kept my world nice and clean.

I have to admit, when I saw the subject "Clean work area" Hesh is the first person I thought of.

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Say what you do, Do what you say.

I did what Don Parker outlined for about 20 years. Bedroom in the house was the dedicated shop and all the saw dust making machinery was out side. Having a good vacuum is great advice. You will be tempted even in your 'clean room' to use sand paper once in a while, especially when it's 5 degrees F in your garage Plus even chip making tools generate some dust.