Setting Up a Shop in a Single Garage
Small workshops are usually planned as though the problem were floor area. It is not. A single garage holds a great deal of equipment. What it does not hold is clear run: the length of uninterrupted space needed in front of and behind a machine so a board can pass through it.
Work out the longest board that will realistically be handled and treat twice that length as the dimension the shop has to provide, at some height, in some direction. It does not have to be permanent floor space. A door that opens, a window at the right height, or a gap between two benches can all serve as the far half of a run, and planning around that is what makes a small shop workable rather than merely full.
This argues for mobility over permanence. Machines on lockable castors can be pulled into the middle of the room when needed and pushed against a wall the rest of the time, so the same floor serves several runs at different times. It also argues for putting the heaviest, least movable thing where its run is naturally longest, usually pointing down the length of the room or out through the door.
The bench is the exception and should not move. A bench that shifts under a plane stroke or a chisel blow is worse than a smaller bench that does not. Mass and a solid connection to the floor or wall matter more than surface area, and a bench that is too low will cause more trouble over a year than one that is too small.
Dust and light are the two services that get postponed and should not be. Fine dust is the part that stays airborne and is worth extracting at the machine rather than filtering from the room afterwards. Light wants to come from more than one direction, because a single overhead source casts the surface into a flat even glare in which it is genuinely difficult to see whether a face is flat. A low raking light across the bench shows in a second what an overhead light hides.
Storage should hold timber flat and off the floor with air around it, because a small shop tends to run damper than the room the furniture will live in. Stock brought in from outside is usually wetter than the shop and the shop is usually wetter than the house, and every step of that gradient is worth letting the wood cross before it is cut.