Garage Storage

I finally got tired of paying for a storage unit and having a disorganized garage so I decided it was time to build some shelving. I had considered buying some of the heavy duty shelves from Costco, $150ish; But I didn't think that one rack would be enough and I didn't feel like spending nearly $300 for just two racks.

It took me about two weeks, between working two jobs and finally thinking of as much as I could to have a good functional design. I started by measuring out the length of the garage. and fingering out how many shelves I wanted and how to space them out. The garage is 17' 4", well if you know anything about lumber (or if you don't) some common lengths are 8, 10, 12, and 16 feet. So I decided that I would just do 16 feet and call it good. Doing a rough measurement floor to ceiling was 9'. Naturally I don't want a one foot gap from the top of the shelves and the ceiling so I want to get 10' 2x4s and cut them to length. As I look at the heights of my shelves it is my main goal to be able to store some of the totes that people have to keep things a little more organized. The ones I own are 17" tall so I want my shelves to be at least 18" to leave a little bit of a gap.

I also have a bunch of my outdoors gear (rock climbing stuff, Scuba Diving stuff, Camping stuff) and I want to be able to put all of that in there as well. So without piling everything on top of each other I think some small 1' shelves would be nice.

Now like any homeowner I have slowly collected things that are tall or long (rakes, shovels, snow board, wet suit) and I want some where to put all of those. So I want a 2-3 foot section where I can put in a few hooks and hang everything or just somewhere to store it all.

By now my tool collection has grown from a small red tool box to three tool boxes and a tool bag. So I want to build me a work bench so I can work on stuff in the garage and stay a bit warmer and dryer. Ideally it'll be five feet wide so I can have plenty of room to do work.

I also have a dog who loves to chew things up. So he has been confined to his own little corner of the garage and so I will be leaving the bottom left hand storage area for him to be able to in the garage and stay warm (he is just a little feller).

Once I finished drawing up the design, I needed to figure out how much lumber I was going to need.

I counted out 8- 2"x4"x16'

23- 2"x4"x10'

6 sheets of ply wood (either 3'x8' or 4'x8' [I soon learned while shopping that plywood only comes in 4' widths so thats what I went with])

Screws

So the first thing I did, a few months earlier, was repaint the walls because the previous owners had pretty well made them look terrible. Once I patched up the walls and gave them a good fresh coat of paint it looked pretty good. Once I finally got started I quickly realized that I had not completely thought out where I wanted things or how I wanted them placed. I had a good idea but did not prepare well enough. I wanted to screw in my back supports into the studs, well I didn't know how to easily find them without buying a stud finder, luckily one of my neighbors had a stud finder that he let me borrow for the day. We first screwed in the three 2"x4"x16' one at the top of the ceiling, one at 3' and one at the base of the foundation. We then took the 2"x4"x10" that I had cut down to 9' then realized the ceiling was shorter, cut it down to 8'6" and still needed to take off about 1/2" to get it to fit snuggly. I cut all 10 of the vertical supports at the same time to make sure they are all the same length.

Once We got the inside frame all put together and screwed in place we took a few of the scrap 2"x4"s and used them as spacers as we built the out frame right up next to the inside from so that they were exactly in line with each other for when we moved it out.

Once the out frame was build we pulled it down and started to move it out when we learned that the ceiling was sagging just a bit. We wedged the frame in where we wanted it and used a hammer and sledge hammer to tap it into place, We put in the top 4' pieces to keep the top from moving back out. We then continued to tap in the rest of the bottom to get in perfectly vertical (using a level). As we did this the storage is acting like a header now since it raised the sagging roof back up to where it should have been.

Once the frame was vertical and the top supports were screwed in, we then finished screwing in the bottom then the middle supports(where we had the 2"x4"x16').

Now was the hard part. Taking my original design and making it reality. We needed up not making some of the smaller shelves simply because once you factor in the 2"x4" you lose 4 inches of space from the design.

I then decided that I didn't want small 12" shelfs on the top or on the bottom.

Once we got the supports in we cut notched out of the plywood to be able to have the plywood sit against the wall so that nothing can fall down the back.

So now that everything is put together and I didn't want to spend any more money; I decided to not buy the doors that I wanted. The plan is to be able to put some swinging doors on the shelving so that when the garage is open the neighbors can't see all of my lovely collection of things.