Garage Storage and Working Space

Depending on what's being stored, you can be concerned with security or not—a motley assortment of chemicals, nuts & bolts or nails and fasteners need not much camouflage from prying eyes, but tool boxes, power tools or anything with DeWalt or Bosch written on it should be concealed, especially items easy to remove and transport. Ever leave your garage door open by mistake? Stuff on display is there for all the wrong people to see, and garage theft is not a laughing matter. Find yourself a pretty garage and you can bet someone knows it's there. Locks on drawers and cabinets aren't a bad idea. Put one on the garage fridge to guard the sipables, while you're at it.


Next is tabletop space. Just as important is the possibility that you might like to have additional working space in the form of a bench, waist-to-chest high, where you feel most comfortable. A proper tabletop lets you bang away on whatever project's at hand, as well as provide temporary storage when you don't feel like putting things away. It could be nothing more than a big shelf, or an old door as large as Trump's conference table. How much flat space do you need? Again, this project is not limited by what you can buy, but what you can imagine.


Fitting this big unit to its pending environment is the final trick in planning its construction. One end can be wider than the other to allow adequate parking for a super-sized '72 Buick. If your garage has a tall ceiling, the shelving can top out at eight feet instead of six, still allowing for surplus vertical storage. Want to use up a narrow big of wall between the chimney and the corner of the garage? No reason that shelf can't be 41 inches wide and nine feet up. The whole time, remember, you have to keep the whole of the project cooking in your head. What's it supposed to do? Where's it going to go? What lumber do you want to use? Until the storage is full of whatever you'll be putting on it, it's not done.

He Put Them Together
The nature of the fasteners employed in building your Frankenshelves is as much a collection of leftovers as the shelving itself. Drywall screws, wood screws, machine screws and lag bolts, whatever will work effectively is more than invited. Nuts and bolts are cool too. Nails can work, but heavy-burden shelving can flex and sway, eventually working an interference-style item like a nail out of its job description. Glues can also be effective as part of the final dress items—cute trim details, supporting bracketry, unstressed shelves. Items like this all-storing shelving live by a different set of rules that are absent of the needs of "pretty," so if you have enough fastening power, its beauty is described by how well it works. Different screw heads, non-matching hardware, slotted, Torx, Phillips, whatever. Is the fastener strong enough for the job? Use it. Over-fasten everything.


Within the process of creation, the Frankenshelf is built to fit where it is destined to be. Co-existence with its element. You'll come across uneven flooring, poorly leveled cement or walls that aren't quite plumb. If this unit were built in a factory, it would be square and true and not fit a bit of your real-world workspace. Instead, make sure elements of the shelving's design—countertop, important storage or cabinet doors—are plumb and level to themselves, and damn the torpedoes. This thing must fit where it lives, not in a vacuum. And beyond that, warped wood and lumber that doesn't match its application can also be played with to fit in. If two boards meet and one twists ten degrees to port, cut the other to match and call it normal enough. Built to the bend.