Best Shelves for Garage and get a beautiful look
Best Shelves for garage is an unique idea for most homeowners because this the one part of the house which remains underutilized and can put to better use.
Another feature of having shelving in the garage is that it helps get rid of the clutter therein and gives a neat well-organized look to the whole area.
You get shelving systems in many designs that can organize as varied items as tools as winter clothing.
Shelving is easily the first step in getting things to organize and giving a neat look to the garage.
Installation of a shelving system helps to minimize the clutter there making it easy for you to locate any item therein and thus saves your time. Shelves allow you to allocate a definite space for different items.
If your box fan, baseball bat or any other item goes missing from its allocated space on the shelf, you come to know of it immediately.
Storage shelves in the garage allow you to assign a spot for all the important things that you need to find promptly.
We all make plans for having an organized garage but in fact it seems a Herculean task! Yet, you need to start from somewhere.
Next, you need to assess the space needs for fixing shelves. Simultaneously, you can decide if you should have some cabinets installed in the garage.
An important point to bear in mind is to understand your specific requirements for storage and the kind of arrangement needs for that purpose.
You may be having a lot of small items like nails and screws, small tools, or craft supplies necessitating the need for shelving units that has many small compartments to store such items.
Best garage shelves Provide for Optimum Organization
Having assessed the area that you are going to need and the specific storage requirements, you can draw a rough layout of the garage.
If you are parking your car in the garage and you intend using the floor space for that purpose only, you need to have your shelves going up vertically and may be secured to the ceiling.
The arrangement that you have in mind could fit into a particular area sandwiched between an internal wall and a hot water heater.
May be you intend storing a large volume of books. Irrespective of the shape, size or configuration, shelves offer the most practical solution.
Some of the very important points that you need to take care of while installing shelves for garage wall are the material of which the shelf made of and its design and style.
For instance if you happen to be living in a damp or humid area, you just can’t consider having wooden shelves.
Likewise, if you are going to store heavy or metallic items, it will be most desirable to be using heavy-duty steel shelves.
Before you really go ahead with the construction you must be clear in mind about the weight that the shelves are going to bear and accessibility of the stored items to make an optimum use of the space at your disposal.
Another important factor is your budget. The price varies from very affordable to highly expensive arrangements.
Best Shelves for Garage Wall
The old fashioned pegboard and metallic hooks that were being used by your father are obsolete these days, compared to highly efficient garage arrangements available these days.
You can get an organizer for the garage for almost any item including hangers for bicycles, brackets for wheelbarrow, ceiling shelves and racks for garden equipment or even garden hoses.
The main idea at the back of these storage organizers for best shelves for garage wall is to make optimum use of the available space. Most often these storage accessories are either next to a wall or hung down from the ceiling. Good storage systems for the garage are so designed as to leave sufficient space for vehicles.
Storage systems for garages come in almost any size, design configuration and material at varying prices.
That makes it important to do your own research well before hand so that you get a garage shelving arrangement that best suits your requirements.
Garage Organizers and Storage Solutions
As a home owner you would feel too bad if there is inadequate storage space in the house and goods get cluttered in the rooms, giving you that feeling of claustrophobia.
This specially holds good for the garage where insufficient parking space forces you to park the car outside the garage.
Besides that the clutter in the garage makes it too difficult to get the right tool at the right time with the result that you waste a lot of time looking for a specific item.
These days you get many options for providing an appropriate storage place for different items in your garage.
You can get a safe and suitably designed storage accessory for the garage to contain almost any household item.
You get garage organizers varying from garage cabinets and shelving to track systems and storage bins, among others.
There are too many options for storage of the smallest to the largest item. Here, let’s have a look at the different storage options available these days.
Heavy Duty Garage Shelves
You get many options for garage shelving, varying from installation of your own wooden shelves to having metallic or wire shelves for storage of heavy or light objects.
Even if you are not a very good DIY enthusiast, you can make your own wooden shelving from wood as that would require minimum of tools.
However, the most important feature that shouldn’t escape your mind is the height so that the arrangement doesn’t interfere with the opening of car doors and the metal railing of the garage door.
Moreover, you need to ensure that the level is proper lest the items should keep sliding off the shelves.
It is also important to ensure that brackets beneath the wood are properly spaced otherwise wood might cave in under heavy weight and get curved and thus spoil the looks of an otherwise well-organized garage.
Garage Cabinets
You get many options as far as garage cabinets are concerned. In this case, you could make your own metallic cabinets, hanging cabinets to fix on the wall or ceiling, and even cabinets with rollers that allow you to shift them to any place or underneath the work benches, should you have space for that.
You need to decide the option at the planning stage. There are many companies in the field of garage storage with each of them presenting unique solution which may or may not suit your specific requirements, depending on the available floor area.
Chemicals
You can also store your paints and chemicals in the garage to keep these chemicals away from the reach of children.
By keeping such items in the garage store you are minimizing the chances of kids reaching for these, otherwise you would have stored them in the house, making them accessible to children.
You will keep such stuff on a shelf at a higher level in the garage or store them in a locked cabinet. These items include different fluids for your vehicle, cans of old or fresh paints, pest sprays, or such poisonous materials.
Safety First
Apart from storing chemicals, it will wise to store your different mechanical or electrical tools in the garage store lest the children will fiddle with those and get hurt in the process.
Another good precautionary measure is to keep the ladder snug to the wall, using a hook, and not leave them just leaning as it will fall upon a child or the child may trip over it.
Likewise, it is important that you wrap up the extension cord and hang it on the wall, making it difficult for the child to access it.
Moreover, a loose chord could accidentally get around the neck of the child which could prove very dangerous.
You should be aware that lot many accidents happen while the parents are away from the garage and kids are playing around in the garage.
Improper storage is a very common cause for such accidents in the storage area of the garage. By having an appropriate storage space for different items you can surely avoid such accidents.
Different Types of garage shelves
It will not be wrong to conclude that most garages in America have some kind of shelving to store a variety of the not so frequently needed items like sporting goods, seasonal holiday items, gardening supplies and tools.
One finds many types of garage shelves varying from the ones that are hung on the wall to free standing shelving units.
Then, there is another variety that you can make yourself from plywood and 2×4′s, or simply buy shelves from the local store.
Another variety comes with doors with the looks of a cabinet that makes is possible to keep things out of sight, thus giving a neater look to the whole area.
We are all aware that garage shelves are of great help to organize our living spaces, but many wouldn’t know that there are other options too for standard shelving? Let’s have a look at some of these.
A very helpful feature of casters is that they can move around easily when you are cleaning or rearranging the garage.
There is another type of distinctive shelving system comprising of bins. You get bins in different sizes.
Some systems design to accommodate bins over one another, on or off the shelf resulting to space saving. Though often used in warehouses for storing inventory, these prove to be very useful in the garage.
Given a definite space to store things, the child can use it for the purpose, thus helping to reduce clutter. The smaller bins are excellent for storing smaller items like nuts and bolts and screws.
In case you are planning to organize your garage, you may like to look beyond normal garage shelves and consider one of the above options. You may find them working better than the standard garage shelves under certain circumstances
How to Select Garage Shelves and Cabinets
Though strictly speaking a garage is meant for parking vehicles, it’s rare to find a garage that houses vehicles alone.
A lot many other items, not necessarily connected with vehicles, find their way to the garage in most households. Of course, it is good to be making better use of the space at your disposal, but having a variety of items in there, usually in an unarranged manner leads to creating clutter in the garage.
As a result, nobody likes to frequent the garage as it begins to provide shelter to rodents and spiders etc. If you like to have a presentable garage while making optimal use of the available space, you need to organize it and the best way of doing that is to install specialty shelves and cabinets.
But, here are a few things you should bear in mind while considering installation of shelves in your garage.
Opt For Sturdy Shelves
Care will take to choose garage shelves that can hold a variety of items of varying weights. It is imperative that you have a fairly good assessment of items that you intend to store there.
Best Shelves for Garage storage systems will design to hold almost anything. You can have overhead systems, taking better advantage of the space available there, or even have your workbench there to contain all your tools.
Choose Slim and Sleek Shelves
Garage space will keep to good use but householders generally tend to avoid visiting garage except for keeping or removing items from there.
The main reason for that are the looks that the garage presents. If it’s good looking organized garage you wouldn’t mind visiting it more frequently.
Look at it this way. The normal size of a garage that accommodates two cars is 500 square feet, that’s probably the largest room in your house. Measuring about 23feet by 22 feet it gives you a total of 68 linear feet on its walls.
Over and above that, you have 500 square feet of ceiling area minus the space of raised garage doors. Now, that is a massive area that could be designed to look attractive while providing storage for the not so frequently used items and thus keep clutter away from the eyes.
Be Practical
Having an appropriate system of best shelves for garage need not necessarily be a very expensive proposition. Of course, ready-to-install shelving is an option, but you could always design and make your own shelving, depending on the kind of items to store, and thus save expense in the process.
However, care will take in choosing the material of shelving if you plan to make that as DIY project. Choose the right metal, steel or aluminum or the right quality of wood and the supporting system for that.
Choose the right screws, nails and glue for wooden shelving to get strong and durable garage shelving. It will be a good cost cutting measure to explore the possibility of reusing some of the materials lying around the garage. Just repaint that and have fresh-looking shelving in the garage.
Garage Shelves and Brackets – Best Combination!
Other than that, cheaper variety of shelves that come with brackets also fail very often. Ultimately, you get what you pay for?
Installation of heavier brackets calls for the provision of strong and well-designed brackets that can bear not only its weight but the weight of your heavy items too.
Understandably, the quality of shelving brackets incorporated with garage shelves and organizers is all the more critical, as we get inclined to use those for storing heavy and bulky items.
Now, the scene here is different from your living room because of the contents of the shelving unit. Imagine one of your electrical or mechanical tools or a bike coming off the shelf with your car parked in there or while a child happened to around.
Garage Wall Shelves – Plastic versus Metal
We are all aware that most of the time, most of us use the garage as a convenient dumping yard for anything and everything that isn’t often required in the house, till you realize one day that it’s all cluttered up, making it difficult to move the car in and out.
Consequently, you are led to consider having garage shelves to help you organize all that clutter that continues to pile up.
Well, most users like to have a common style of garage shelves that are simple, durable, and easy to install. Then, you have a few options of the materials used for these shelves, which include wood, metal, or plastics, with each having its own positive and negative points.
Therefore, it becomes important to decide on the material of your shelving prior to deciding its type and style. That calls for a bit of effort on your part by way of taking an inventory of items in your garage.
Having make an assessment makes the decision-making easier and more logical, you nearly finish half the job.
Understandably, heavier items will call for metallic shelving for its strength and durability and you need not worry of its buckling down with all your materials. But, that doesn’t imply that stronger plastics are not available.
Yet, at the back of your mind you’ll feel more comfortable with a strong product often patronized by industries for the reason already stated.
You really won’t have to have second thoughts about the capability of shelving, every time you want to store another heavier item over there.
Wooden Shelves for Your Garage
It’s rare to come across a garage that is truly and exclusively being uses for housing a car. Invariably, one finds all the imaginable household stuff getting in the garage.
The recommended size of lumber for the frame and shelves for a simple floor supported shelf design is 2’x4’ and ¾” respectively.
Here’s how you go ahead with it:
Keep the 2x4s vertically on the ground, pressed against the wall and separated by a distance of 2 feet from each other. Attach to the wall thru screws. Use additional 2x4s for making horizontal supports.
Lay one along the bottom, with its 4″ side against the upright pieces and check with a level that it’s straight. This is your support for the bottom shelf. Fix screws along its length, at every point where there is an upright 2×4. Repeat the same process for each shelf level, and keep going up. This forms the back part of the frame.
For the front part of the frame, assemble horizontal and vertical 2x4s as per the measurements you already followed. Nail them together and let the frame stand on the floor.
The front part can attach to the back by means of 2x4s cut to the depth of the shelf. You provide support and stability by nailing the top part to the rafters or the stronger parts of the ceiling.
There are many plans for shelving. It may be worthwhile to go thru some books, magazines or be online to study and decide on the one that best suits your style and requirement.