Home DIY Projects

Organizing the garage for more than merely the auto

The garage is the ideal home for all sorts of things and activities from the storing of sports equipment to tools and machines; and it’s original purpose for auto parking to activities like a home-office, a gym or a workshop. If your garage is simply applied for storing rather than other things it really requires some shelving for arrangement.

Normally garage shelves can be obtained in 2 primary forms: site-built and prefabricated. Site-built is shelving ordinarily not so pricey and allows you to accommodate the measurements to the free space accessible. Everything that you need can be found at your nearest home center, timber yard, discount store or hardware store.

One of the basics of the garage shelving is made of a simple piece of ¾” plywood or a length of 1x or 2x timber on a set of heavy-duty shelf wall brackets. This is mounted by attaching the wall brackets to the studs directly using long screws then by attaching the shelving to the brackets. To fortify the shelf you can add a brace at each stud.

A different sort of shelving are the floor supported ones. One method is to run straight 2×4s each 50 inches and resting them on the floor and attaching them to the rafters or roof joists at the top. In addition, the 2×4s are extended horizontally on edge between the uprights then a particleboard is applied to produce the shelving. The most normally utilized dimensions are 19-25 inches for depth and the spacing between 2×4s is usually on 25 ins but of course, these sizes can be converted to suit the size of the items you are storing.

For storing small items you should take into consideration the room between the rivets. By attaching a series of 1×2 strips horizontally to the inside edges of 2 connected rivets around 6 inches apart, cutting some 1×4 and 1×6 pieces of lumber and fitting them between studs and slipping them on top of the 1×2s you can create some small adjustable shelves. These are great for jars, cans and bottles and also for other small and light items. The small shelves are great for organizing and storing screws and nails.

The better choice when constructing preassembled garage shelves is Steel shelves. Plastic shelves may be enough for storing light weight items but in time you may need something more capable for storing heavier things. One disadvantage of the steel shelves is that they cannot be cut to size so they have general widths, depths and heights so you have to choose something that suits within your accessible space.

Adjustability is another significant consideration in prefabricated shelves. Preassembled shelves should be adjustable to at least two different locations within the shelf framework and also the pins for aligning should be heavy duty and should have something in place for keeping them from working loose or getting unexpectedly shifted.

Another thing to be taken into consideration when choosing for prefabricated shelving, especially those designed for heavy loads, is that they may need a wall fastening or other support against slanting.

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