Reclaim your GARAGE w_ DIY Garage Storage Shelves 🚘 FREE PLANS!

What's going on everybody ?

I'm Johnny Brook .

Welcome back to the crafted workshop video and welcome to my garage .

So , in this week's video , I'm gonna show you how I completely reorganize this space building this above the garage shelving .

Without further ado , let's go and get started with the video .

I actually started this project back in May when my buddy Alex from the single track sampler was in town working on his van with me and luckily he gave me a help and hand cleaning out the garage , which is always the first step .

So after cleaning it out , but before actually getting to building , I jumped into sketch up to start figuring out where I wanted the shelving .

So my goal was to be able to get two of your typical plastic storage bins stacked on top of one another in the space between the ceiling and the shelves .

And I also wanted to minimize the waste when cutting the parts from typical dimensional lumber that said , looking back , I would have made these shelves just a little bit taller , but we'll get to that a little bit later .

So after figuring out where all the shelving was gonna go , I headed out to the garage and started cutting things down at the Microsoft .

And since most of these pieces were cut to similar links , I could bash things out quickly by setting up a stop on the mines soft .

Next , I went ahead and found my stud locations in the first area where I'd be adding shelving , then transferred those locations to my two by two horizontal support pieces .

And once those stud locations were marked out , I partially drove in screws in those locations , which really simplified things when it was time to mount the pieces .

Also , just as a note , I used three inch screws anywhere .

I was fastening these two by two to the walls or ceiling and they provided a ton of strength with the screws already in the board mounting , the two by two was too breezy and I just made sure it was level .

And also that the distance from the ceiling to the two by two was what I needed it to be , which was 31 3 quarters of an inch .

In my case .

Next , I mounted another two by two to the ceiling , making sure I was driving screws into the joist above and having Alex there to help definitely came in handy this time as it's pretty tough to hold these boards up and drive in the screws by yourself , which I found out a little later .

And I definitely recommend finding a helper on this project , if you can .

Sweet , sweet with the two by two s mounted , I could get the two by four uprights prepped by driving in more screws which were 2.5 inch screws this time .

And I also ended up pre drilling these holes later on to help avoid splitting the two by fours .

And that helped a ton once the screws were in , I could go ahead and get the uprights mounted to the two by twos , making sure they were level .

And the spacing on all these pieces is pretty specific .

And I'm actually gonna have three plans for these shelves linked in the video description below in case you're interested .

Also , I didn't end up adding glue to these joints on this first shelf , but I ended up coming back and adding it later .

And also I added it to the rest of the uprights moving forward and these shelves ended up holding a ton of weight and the glue will really help to keep the joints nice and strong over time to complete the framework for the shelving .

I added the last two by two to the bottom end of the uprights with more 2.5 inch screws .

And once again , having a helping hand here was extremely helpful with the framework of the shelving done .

I could get the actual shelving material which was half inch plywood in my case , cut to size and this plywood was actually left over from my shop build and was really perfect for this .

And since most of the weight is kind of over the two by two structure when using these plastic storage bins , half inch plywood is plenty strong .

But you could certainly use three quarter inch plywood if you wanted some more strength .

But just keep in mind that that also adds more weight .

Also , since I already had this plywood on hand , I had to cut it size myself with my tracks saw which was kind of a pain .

But I would highly recommend letting your local home center cut it for you .

If you're buying this plywood new , all these pieces are cut to the same size and it would save you a ton of work , having them cut the pieces on their panel saw with the plywood pieces cut to size .

I could get them mounted on the two by two framework .

And you can see that the plywood fits pretty much perfectly between the wall and the two by four uprights .

I used inch and five ace trim head screws to mount the plywood , but pretty much any screw shorter than two inches will work .

That said I really like these trim head screws for this application because the heads end up below the surface of the plywood .

So it's easy to slide the storage bins onto the shelves without them catching on any screwheads .

And these particular trim head screws are from Rockler .

And I also use them to mount all of the plywood paneling during my shop build .

So with that , the first set of shelving was done and I could just repeat the process on this longer wall in our garage .

And this time I pulled out my line laser and since I was gonna have to use 28 ft lengths of two by two , here , I wanted to make sure they lined up really nicely along the entire length of the wall and the line laser is the perfect tool for this .

I also made pencil marks on the wall using the laser as reference so that I could still line things up even if my body was blocking the laser when it came time to actually mount the two by twos .

Once again , I found my stud locations on the wall , transferred those measurements to the two by twos and pre drove screws to make things easier .

This time , I didn't have a helping hand when mounting the two by twos , but it was still pretty simple with the screws already in place and my alignment marks on the wall .

Next , I could mount the two by twos on the ceiling .

And this time , I had to be more conscientious of where I was driving the screws as my joy run perpendicular to these shelves .

And because of this , I had to figure out where the joys were located before mounting the two by twos .

And I went ahead and pre drove screws in those locations before mounting the two by twos on the ceiling .

So with the two by two is up , I could go ahead and pre drill and pre drive screws into the two by four uprights and then just repeat the whole process of mounting the uprights .

And as you can see , I did add glue this time and it definitely made the whole shelf feel a lot more solid .

Also on this shelf since again , there were two links of two by twos butted up to one another .

I ended up attaching the center most upright to both two by two by driving one screw on each end of the upright into each two by two .

Finally , I could add all of the plywood to finish another section of shelving .

Also , I just wanted to mention that this shelving design is based on a video my buddy Jay Bates put out a few years ago and I'll link to that video in the description below in case you wanna go check his video out , it was at this point that I decided to try loading one of the shelves with the two bins stacked up .

And this is where I realized I wasn't gonna be able to get the bins out without sliding them out partially so that they clear the two by two on the ceiling .

And I didn't take that two by two into account when figuring out all the dimensions .

And in retrospect , I would have made my two by four uprights 2 to 3 inches longer and just use 10 ft long , two by fours .

So that I didn't end up with these weird large off cutts .

My shelves still work , but it's just kind of a pain to get bins on and off .

Especially if the bins are loaded up with heavy items .

The next sets of shelving to install were on the opposite wall from the previous shelving and these are directly above our garage door .

And I knew I would need to make these upright shorter so that they didn't interfere with the garage door .

And I went ahead and measured for this before cutting the parts for these shelves and installation was just more of the same mounting the two by two into the studs and joists the two by four uprights to the two by twos and then adding the plywood .

But this time I did need to notch around this little bump out in our wall .

And to do this , I first marked out where I needed to cut , using a speed square and then cut to my line with my jigsaw .

And I ended up with an extremely nice fit .

And this really allowed me to maximize my storage space against that wall .

And with that shelf in , I could just continue working my way around the garage .

And this is really where things got tricky as I had a lot of obstacles to work around , for example , I needed to notch the plywood on the next set of shelving around the two by four uprights on the adjoining shelf which I once again did with the jigsaw .

Once that was done , I could get the plywood attached and then repeat the whole process one more time to create the final bit of shelving in the garage .

And as you might have noticed , I decided to skip the shelving on the right wall in the shot .

And that's because that's the wall .

All of my shop equipment will live on .

So with that , the garage shelving was pretty much done and here's how it looks all loaded up .

And as you can see this added a ridiculous amount of storage to our garage .

And the cost was surprisingly low in total .

I used 18 2 by two s 82 by fours and four sheets of half inch plywood .

And that's only about 100 and $60 in lumber , plus some screws and glue , which in my opinion is an insane deal for this amount of storage .

All right .

Hopefully you guys enjoyed this one .

I love the amount of storage , this really pretty simple project added to this garage .

Again , if you want to check out the plans I have available for this , they're totally free to download .

I'll have links to that in the video description below .

Also down there , I'll have links to all of the tools and materials I use on this project .

And if you're not already go ahead and get subscribed and ring that little notification bell .

So you don't miss next week's video , which is gonna be on how I did the rest of the organization in this garage , including building a drill charging station and a work bench .

All right .

Thanks again for watching everybody .

And until next week , Happy Building .