Garage Makeover Progress: Storage Solutions

This past weekend we made good headway with some of the storage solutions we're putting in our garage. Starting with buying three shelving units (pictured without the shelves installed yet). Each of the five shelves is rated to hold 800lbs, so even though we'll likely never need to hold that much, at least we know we've got really sturdy shelves to work with!

Since it seems like I'm ending up painting just about everything that goes into our garage makeover, I spray painted two of the three shelves, so they wouldn't blend into the grey wall color so much. The third, unpainted, shelving unit is just going in the workroom, which isn't painted (or even drywalled, for that matter), so I wasn't worried about it blending in.

Let me tell you, these used a lot more spray paint than I thought they would! Four cans of semi gloss just on the slim metal frames.

Notice one of our new wire basket light fixtures making an appearance. Love!

We also got around to putting the doors back on the cabinet we'd mounted to the wall the previous weekend. Even though it still has wood panel doors, this cabinet looks a lot sleeker than it used to now that it has fresh white paint and oil rubbed bronze spray painted hardware.

Another storage solution we worked on this weekend was a bin to hold our scrap wood. We seem to have a ton of 3ft to 8ft long pieces of wood left over from various projects, so I thought something to hold it would be really useful. My husband opted to tackle this project, making a simple frame out of 2x4s.

Once his frame was built, he attached scrap plywood to the sides, and put it on casters, so it would be easy to move around the garage as needed. I'm currently working on painting this scrap wood bin too (Of course! Like I said earlier, I seem to have to paint everything!)

While he was working on the scrap wood bin, I was trying to tackle the rolling drawers I wanted for under our left workbench shelf. And it kind of ended up being a fail-project! At least at first.

Basically, I spent several hours cutting out all of the plywood I needed to make four 13" H x 17" W x 20" D rolling drawers. I was trying to be smart, and keep costs down by using half inch plywood we already had on hand. But that was the fatal flaw with my plan. The plywood just ended up being too warped. Especially when I was trying to assemble the rolling drawers with pocket screws. With only 1/2 inch wood, you have to be pretty damn right on with your pocket screw holes, and it just wasn't really working with the warped wood I had to work with. Sigh!

My husband told me to just give up and buy something to meet my needs, so off to Target I went on Saturday evening. And I did find these cheap plastic bins for about $5 each that were just about the right dimensions I was looking for.

So I went ahead and attached the casters to them that I'd already bought for my wood rolling drawers.

But....these plastic bins just really weren't that pretty. Very useful rolling storage, but very blah.

So something had to be done. But I had an idea of how I could combine my original plan with these new plastic bins. I just had to get rid of some annoying little plastic tabs near the tops of the bins.

They came off pretty easy with the Dremel though.

And then I was able to flatly mount just the front panels I'd already cut for the unsuccessful wood version of the rolling drawers. And add the pretty oil rubbed bronze cup pulls that I'd already bought.

Much prettier than the plain plastic bins, at least from the front!

I'm so glad I took the time to spruce up the fronts of these rolling drawers. I love the drawer pulls that go with the spray painted hardware on the cabinet above. And as a bonus, I still got to use up some of the scrap plywood I took all of the time to cut, and since I only did the front sides, any warping of the wood didn't really matter.

The final storage solution for the garage that we got a start on this past weekend was two of these inexpensive drawer units which will go underneath the right side workbench. I ordered them from Walmart, and for less than $50, they're not the sturdiest things in the world, since they're just particle board. But the price was too good to pass up, considering how long it would take us to build drawer units from scratch.

We got them assembled and put locking casters on the bottom of them, but I haven't gotten around to putting the drawer pulls on them, which will be the same the oil rubbed bronze cup pulls I used on the rolling drawers under the other workbench.

I also found some not-too-warped scrap plywood and some quarter round trim to make top panels for the drawer units. I'm thinking it will be great to be able to pull the drawer units out and use them as mobile work surfaces around the garage, so I wanted to reinforce the tops. I stained the tops with the same Kona stain used on the workbenches and am currently working on protecting them with a couple of coats of polyurethane.

So that's what we've been up to this past week! Lots of building and painting. With more on the horizon for this weekend. So. Much. Left. To. Paint! But I can't complain too much (well, except about the heat and humidity when I need to paint outside) because it's all going to be so pretty when we're done in a couple of weeks.

Do you have any storage solutions in your garage? How do you keep things organized out there?