Wall Storage
One thing that I knew would free up floor space and give me more opportunities for storage would be to hang things from one of the walls in my shop. My biggest hangup with attaching anything to one side of my garage is that it is a cinder block wall. Most new houses built in Florida nowadays are constructed with cinder block for the exterior walls, for obvious reasons. I was trying to avoid having to deal with drilling and screwing into this wall because I have zero experience with masonry. It was really the only location in my garage to hang anything though, and it would offer me way more storage space. Concrete drilling...let’s do it.
My plan was to use some double-laminated sheets of plywood I had from a failed project (I’m not even going to get into that one) and cut that into strips the size of a traditional 2 x 4 wall stud. That way, I could screw the “studs” into the cinder block wall, attach a sheet of plywood to the “studs” and then I could screw directly into the plywood to hang things anywhere that I wanted, with the plywood “studs” giving me additional support if I wanted to hang something heavier.
I made sure to do as much research as I could for what types of anchors to use for drilling into concrete. I settled on using Tapcon concrete screws for the entire project. I bought one of their concrete drilling bits and got a Ryobi hammer drill to do the work (I’m already using the Ryobi battery platform anyway). I had my layout all set, and marked everything on the walls where things were to go. Once I got the “studs” into the correct position, I screwed the first one in place at the top. I used a level to make sure that it was plumb and screwed in the bottom. I spaced out a couple more Tapcon screws between the top and bottom to finish securing the “stud” to the wall. I continued on with all of the “studs” in the same fashion until they were all hung. Overall, drilling into the concrete wasn’t as bad as I thought it might be. I just took my time with each one, made sure to suck out the concrete dust with a vacuum after drilling and screwed in the Tapcons. And, yes, I made sure I had my air filtration running and I had a proper dust mask on the entire time. Concrete dust is nasty stuff.
Next up was the plywood. Hanging larger pieces of plywood on the wall, three feet off of the floor, was definitely not a job for one person. With the assistance of Lisa, and my trusty lift cart again (that thing has been a Godsend in the workshop), we got the sheet in place and I screwed it into the plywood “studs”. Short of an earthquake, I don’t think these things are going to come down from the wall.
I decided to use most of the cinder block wall in my garage for storage (if you’ve got it, use it). There is one sheet on the left side of the breaker panel, and one sheet on the right. I don’t have a lot of things on the left one at the moment. As of July 2020, I rearranged my workshop to make room for a new dust collector, and I found other places for storing a couple of the things stored on this section of wall. On the wall to the right of the breaker panel I decided to utilize the Bora Portamate lumber storage system. I bought two of the 6-tier racks so that I could store longer boards and space out the weight over a greater distance. I placed the top shelf of these a little closer to the ceiling (maybe a little too close looking back) so that I would have room on the rest of the plywood for a small french cleat system.
This is the section of wall closest to the garage door. I’ve got, from left to right, my long Festool track saw track, Incra miter sled, Kreg pocket hole jig and two long levels. On the other mini section I’ve got a wall-mount fan and my human-powered pencil sharpener (yes, those are still things).
This is a current shot of the wall storage (as evidenced by the clamp storage used). This is the section of wall closest to my miter saw station (you can just catch a peek of the corner of it in this picture). The bottom half contains my f-style & parallel clamps, while the top half is all lumber storage.
As of November 2020, I’ve had the wall storage in place for around a year and a half and it’s performed great.
***UPDATE: February 2023***
After some three-plus years, I decided to make a few changes to the wall storage layout. For one, my track saw tracks have been mounted on my garage door with some FastCap Track Racks.
Secondly, the Incra miter sled is no longer in use in the workshop. I found it difficult to get consistently accurate results with it, especially with angled cuts. Also, it was just too big, heavy and awkward to move around the shop (at least for me).
My reasoning for moving things around was quite simple…I needed a bit more space and accessibility. Let me elaborate.
My hardwood has always been stored on the 6-tier Bora racks above my clamps and Harvey dust processor (see previous photos above). While a great use of the wall space, it was entirely too inconvenient to require a ladder to add/remove something from the racks. This was especially true when it came to longer and heavier pieces of something like hickory or white oak. As I continue to age, it’s paramount that I lessen the likelihood of hurting myself in the shop by eliminating ladder usage. Having MS, there’s always the chance that I could lose my balance and fall and injure myself.
Since I have, really, only my pocket hole jig hanging on the left wall section now, I can move that and put my hardwood storage over there instead. It’s at a much more manageable height, and it gave me the opportunity to inventory what I’ve got and organize it better.
I also took the opportunity to install the 4-tier Bora rack I had above Lumber Cart 3.0 and move it above the garage door track. Everything up there is stuff that was taking up space on my Rockler Material Mate cart, including some extra-long heavy-duty drawer slides that can’t be stored elsewhere.
With the lumber racks moved, I took the opportunity to attach more French cleats to the right wall section. This let me reorganize my clamps to make better usage of the space. The longer clamps were mounted higher and the smaller ones were place underneath those, freeing up space for my pocket hole jig and other things in the future (most likely MORE clamps). I actually have a bunch of squeeze clamps in a drawer under my workbench that I’d like to put on the wall as well (future project).
The location of the hardwood storage is not going to be a permanent solution. My ultimate goal is to house the vast majority of my lumber inventory in a shed in the back yard. Of course, the shed has to be there for this to become a reality. That is something for a later update…hopefully.
