Garage Shelf Plans A Must For Amateur Carpenters

If you plan to install a new shelving system in your garage, having accurate garage shelf plans is going to be crucial to your success - as the old adage goes, ‘measure twice, cut once’. That said garage shelf plans don’t need to be particularly elegant. There’s really no need to put together a perfect CAD drawing of your project (unless you plan to take it to have it built from plastic, of course). As such, a simple pencil and paper sketch of your garage shelf plans will do in the majority of instances.

Your Own Garage Shelf Plans

  • The great thing about coming up with your own garage shelf plans is that doing so will allow you to customize the design to your home.

  • For instance, if you decide to install cantilevered garage storage shelves, you can build them into the wall, sufficiently high off the ground so that they don’t take up the floor space that pre-made shelf kits from Ikea or Home Depot are likely to.

  • This allows you store your lawnmower or car underneath them.

  • This is what is meant by space conservation - building garage storage systems that don’t impinge on the space required for existing systems.

  • The result is, in essence, storage space for free.

What Boards To Use

You can build great cantilevered shelves out of simple two-by-two and one-by-four boards, with a pair of eight foot long boards to act as the back support for the shelves. Keep in mind, however, when purchasing your boards, that two-by-twos have an actual dimension of 1.5 inches by 1.5 inches, just as one-by-fours have an actual dimension of 3.5 inches by 3.4 inches. Check out woodgears.ca for detailed information about the construction of shelves for your garage of basement.

Constructions And Your Garage Shelf Plans

  • One thing you really do need to make a note of in your garage shelf plans is the fact that the shelves should be glued in place with strong wood glue, and not just secured by means of screws or nails.

  • The reason for this is the stiffness the glue will impart to the shelving arrangement.

  • Pictures abound on the internet of people hanging from their shelves, demonstrating the great strength that wood glue in combination with screws enables.

  • Without glue, shelving would sag under such weight, result in the screws wearing loose and eventually giving way.

  • When gluing your shelves, leave them glued for several hours before placing any weight on them, to allow them adequate time to set.

Attaching The Posts

Another thing to keep in mind when formulating your garage shelf plans is that, once you’ve attached your shelves and supports to the support posts from which your shelving will hang, you’ll need to be very specific about the way that you attach the posts to your wall.

  • If you have exposed ceiling rafters in your garage, all you’ll need to do is screw or nail the support posts to the joists.

  • If you don’t have the convenience of exposed joists, you’ll need to sink your screw right into the wall.

  • It’s recommended that you use screws that are at least six inches long, as without this length your screws are likely to wear loose, damaging your plaster in the process.

  • They should also be evenly spaced so as to prevent an uneven amount of weight being applied to any one of the screws.