Thursday, January 10, 2013

Operation Organize Garage: What Wood You Do?

Welcome back to my garage "series" y'all! Let me start this by telling you that we will not have daily posts about the garage. Don't want to set expectations that I won't live up to, so I'll get to it when I get to it ;-) On that note!

I'd mentioned yesterday that I was nearly finished with a lumber storage rack, and today I get to show you the HUGE difference it's making in whipping my garage into shape!

I kinda followed the instructions here, so I won't go step-by-step (Ethan actually did a wonderful job explaining how it was done!), but I'll tell you how I made it cheaper based on some stuff I'd already had on-hand.

Let's refresh your memory with the "before"

On the floor in the front of the garage sat all of the lumber that was too big to go into my workshop. There was also an amazing door that I put on Craigslist yesterday (*sad face*), some drywall from when we knocked down the wall/archways in the living room and some large boxes meant to recycle cans (that have been what I use to paint on). As you can see, it was a mess.

Well, it's not anymore.

As I said, I followed the directions here, but instead of buying two new sheets of plywood, I used a 12" wide sheet that I already had, and bought eight 1x3 furring strips. This whole project ended up costing about $15.

I had never created a jig using my table saw, so it took a second for me to figure out how it was done (I'll admit, I was initially a little intimidated and had actually considered cutting all of the angles with my circular saw). Here's a quick run-through (actually, I'd forgotten to take pictures between the second and third steps, but I know you can all infer what was done).

It went much more quickly than cutting all the angles with the circular saw, and now I'm sure I can figure out how to make my own simple jigs. WOOT for both!

I had anticipated the project to take about 3 hours, but I had too many blonde moments (the first and last time I will ever use this phrase on my blog), and I think it ended up taking closer to 6 hours.

I don't have a ton of full-lenght boards, so this totally meets all of my needs. I was able to stand on the angled boards and jump, so it's beyond sturdy. I plan to use the top shelf for the stuff I want to keep but will need minimal access to such as trim or shelving boards ripped out of closets (I'm too short to reach up there, which is why the drywall compound is sitting where it is in the "finished" picture, so anything up there has to be used infrequently). The middle shelf gets my full-lenght dimensional lumber, and the bottom shelf can fit full sheets of ply. There's somewhere for everything!

The best part? I get to check something off of my list...

  • Build/Buy another shelving unit and maybe put them side-to-side along the back wall.
  • Build a lumber storage rack (nearly complete, will have a post on that soon!)
  • Figure out bike organization
  • Create a mud room system along the right wall (plans for that are being drawn up by the lovelyAna White)
  • Paint door + trim (a little far fetched, but it's so dirty that I'm thinking a darker color would save my sanity)
  • Maybe I'll get around to cleaning the floor.... (this one is REALLY far-fetched)

  • Of course I'll keep you updated on the progress. How's your lumber situation? Can you think of any other uses for this storage system?


    1. Ahh... I feel so inspired! I REALLY need to do this... yuck! :)


      1. Thanks for comin' over, Whitney! I know, lumber is so hard to deal with! Especially if you don't have the wall space for it. Blah!

    2. We need to do this. Good job!

    3. The littles did such a good job of helping you with this project. Looks great. If we could just sell this house and be off to the country I'd have another project to do.

      1. They did! So did Mr. Goats... but I never give him the credit he deserves ;-)

        Is the market just not goin' in your favor? What's takin' so long?!

    4. Hi Gina. The lumber storage looks great, and I'm so glad my instructions were helpful. Thanks for sharing it with your readers.