December 01, 2017

Organizing the New Garage

After months of working on the house end of the barndominium with our tools in boxes, the workbench, and *gasp* on the floor, I began organizing the garage side. I first had to have Hubby's help hanging plywood on the walls. In our metal building, the vertical posts are fifteen feet apart, and the horizontal girders are four feet apart. So we needed something to hang stuff on. We put two rows of plywood bolted to the iron, and bolted a 2x4 to the girder eight feet off the floor. Just the right height for a two foot platform that can hold several hundred pounds, and three shelves above that for lighter items.


I have begun building the lower cabinets as we decide where we want things.  So far, a regular height cabinet and a lower one for the miter saw/scroll saw.  Above those cabinets, I hung a cleat across the wall.  That gives us the flexibility to move things around until we have them in the most convenient place.  Point of use is my mantra in this workshop.  Hopefully, that will save some steps when it is finished.

If you haven't seen a cleat system used for tools, it is simply a board cut in two with a 45° angle.  One half of the board is nailed to the wall and the other half is used on tool caddies.  The two wedged pieces fit together snugly but it is still easy to remove the tool caddy when needed.  If it's a long board, the other half can be used on quite a few caddies.  I made some of the cleats out of hardwood and some out of plywood.  I made all the cleats and caddies out of scrap wood.



I made clamp holders, ear protection muff holders, measuring tape holders, jig holders, and more.  One thing I saw on pinterest that I thought looked pretty neat was a tape roll dispenser, so I made a few.   I even made slots on each side to make it easier to lift them off the cleat.



They look nice, but weren't very practical.  A full roll of tape fills the dispenser nicely, but a roll that is close to the end sits low in the dispense and the tape has be pulled upward which sometimes made it pop out of the dispenser even though I curved the dowel slot to try to prevent that.  They take up extra space on the wall, they are a little fiddly to make, and sometimes we just want to grab a roll and not mess with a dispenser.  But more than anything, when they are on the cleat, it's hard to see which roll of tape is in the dispenser.  So after working on them over the course of several hours, I marked them a fail.


What worked better for us was to make a box that would hold all sizes of tape and have them visible no matter what size they are.

After staring at the underside of the platform one day, I decided to make use of that space too.  In this one I put caulk guns and caulking.  That odd stuff that doesn't sit well on shelves and tangles in drawers works well in a drop down drawer.  I put hinges on the back and some simple wood pieces that turn to let the drawer down.


The next thing I want to do is put a rail on the front of the platform and attach a ladder to it that will tuck in when not in use.

4 comments:

  1. You are indeed clever! I am so impressed.

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  2. Very nicely done.

    Have a fabulous day and weekend. ☺

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  3. Marti: Its always nice to get the garage in order, shelving is a must in our garage.
    I love working with wood, we now have a finished garage, its now the man/woman cave for tools, I have mine he has his, I even bought a drill press for myself, Mike has to ask to use it, giggles.
    You have done a fantastic job with your space.

    Catherine

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  4. Wow! Very impressive. You should have your own YouTube show.

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