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Lumber Storage/Shop improvements

6K views 7 replies 2 participants last post by  McDade 
#1 ·
Putting the shop in order.

Hello, hope you will sit with me for a moment as I work my way through projects to put my shop in order, but first a quick introduction. My name is Eric I live just north east of Kansas City, MO and I am not a professional wood worker or even what you may call a hardcore hobbyist (I leave those titles to the people who have earned them) in fact if I had to come up with a label I would say I am more of tinker as I will work with most any material if it suits my needs. Now as for my "shop" well it leaves a little to be desired, you see my house has the 2 car (with a shoe horn and some Vaseline) garage built under the main level of the house in ground (read low ceilings and little natural light). The previous owner filled in one of the garage doors so I use that side as my work/maker space and try to store everything else around it (married with 3 kids so lots of storing), on the up side being in ground on two sides with the house on a third the place stays relatively comfortable in the summer, long sleeves and heat my be needed on the really cold stretches in winter.

So now you have a picture of my shop space low ceilings, poor lighting, bare concrete floor, boxes of Christmas decorations and every other season we decorate for, bicycles, chest freezer, lawn mower, yard tools etc.., and the list goes on before you even get to the stuff you need to fit into it to call it a shop. So this is where we are going to start and we are going to operate on a tight budget (can't spend more money on material to store stuff then we spend on what is being stored).

First order of business build a small lumber storage rack that can handle up to 12' lumber max (rarely use anything this long but hey why not), smaller cut offs, random sized reclaimed pieces and sheet goods because the wife wants it out of the middle of the parking area. :) So where to put it, well there is about 2 feet of space between the wall and the garage door that isn't well utilized so there we go unfortunately the wall is all concrete and less then perfectly flat. So I started looking for ideas and came across a couple here at LumberJocks and a design I thought I could modify on Marc's youtube channel (Woodworking with The Wood Whisperer) here is another example April Wilkerson.

Time to take measurements and get a good back of the napkin sketch done. (I will post this later for reference)

Well I have just under 8' (94") from the floor to the bottom of the sheet rock ceiling to work with so based on my doodle I want to have at least 2 shelves for stick lumber, vertical space for short cuts and a mobile sheet goods rack. So lets figure maximum height for the sheet goods cart with full sheets on it and that will dictate our space for shelves. So sheet goods = 48" plus 1.5" for the base of the cart plus 2" for clearance under the cart and lets leave 2" above the sheet goods just so we aren't beating up the edges so 53.5" is our magic number for the cart with product on it so take that away from our 94" and we have 40.5" (hmm need a taller garage).

Well with that we can get started so we will cut our vertical shelf supports 40" long leaving them 1/2" shy of the ceiling I have some scrap 2×4's (rough looking but free from a shipment for work) laying around so we will utilize those laid on the flat so that we can Tapcon trough them to the wall with 3-1/2" Tapcon screws (also applied construction adhesive to the back of each support don't want it falling on any kids or me). now with those up lets build our self arms (I really should of taken pics of this part but oh well if someone needs me to I can take a couple close ups of these). So basically we are going to make our arms like April and Marc but with our two bys laid flat and using 1/2 ply sides (just rough ply I had on hand), realizing this may reduce the capacity some I built a single mock up and put roughly 200lbs on it with no deflection so I am pretty confident in the design - did further testing later. Now with my limited space I only wanted the end of the self 18" off the wall so accounting for the thickness of the verticals I cut the 2×4s to 16.5" then laid out the gussets to match.

And now we have this:


Still got a ways to go.
 
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#3 ·
Continuing on with the lumber storage

Wow that first post got a little wordy (I should really learn to take more/better pictures) well moving right along.

So we have the upper shelf section done now with the design I am going for I want to tuck my vertical storage underneath it and behind my movable sheet goods cart. Depth here is going to be an issue (I have bid shop envy) as we still only have 2' to work with so lets consider what kind of space that cart will take up. I have decided the base of my cart will be a 2×10 and to acheive the height we set out in the first post I will have to mount the casters to the side of it (I happened to have 2 medium/heavy duty casters just laying around and they measure 4" tall) so we have 10" (2×10 plus the sheeting on each side) and roughly 4" for the width of the caster with mount so 14" so if I make the vertical storage area about 6" deep that gives us just a little wiggle room, great. Hmm no 2×6's off to the hardware store we go.

OK, so we now have 4 2"x6"x8' and 2 2"x10"x8' time to get back to work. First thing I did was cut a 2×4 to span under the verticals for the shelves, then cut the 4 2×6's to 50.5" (roughly each had to be fit to the uneven floor). I attached the 2×6's to the 2×4 I cut earlier and then fit it in place under the shelves (adjusting as I went) I then took the cut offs from the 2×6's and made the floors for each bin. -- maybe a good place for a pic to explain all of that---



As you can see I used some small L brackets to secure everything to the wall, it may be worth noting the 2×6's were screwed to the 2×4 before it was all pushed up in place (read beat into place with rubber mallet as I cut it all very close) and then I screwed through it into the shelf verticals.

Well all the framing is in place time to skin it. I have some OSB on hand that I was given for free so we are going to use it (I believe it is .35" thick or 3/8"). I simply ripped the OSB to size covering just over half of each bin then applied construction adhesive to the framing and used my stape gun to put it all up.



OK shelves are up, bins are in now we just need to build the cart.

Hmm need to figure out what size to make the pictures so they don't get cropped.
 
#6 ·
OK lets get the sheet goods out of the way.

To finish up this lumber storage area we need to build our cart for sheet goods. Now as we have no room in the shop anyway I didn't see the need to make the cart roll round so again I will be borrowing from some of the ideas I mentioned in the first post (check the links these people have really nice set ups or search here on LumberJocks for lumber storage) and will be hinging the cart to our vertical lumber rack on one side and will roll on the a fore mentioned casters on the other.

My napkin calls out for a simple two chamber cart with a lower front section to allow access to cut offs, the base will be a 2×10 as will the back the front, back and center divider will be made of some extra OSB I have laying around (plywood would be great here but use what you have).



To allow for our 2" max caster height for design clearance I will be making housings for the casters to mount to the side of the cart rather then underneath it (you could either adjust your design to allow for taller casters and give up some self space above or possibly locate some smaller casters again just working with what I had.



And now here we are, just need to finish it up and get it mounted.

 
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