Ctech Archives - Garage Tailors

Professional Storage Solutions – Cabinets

July 16, 2013 by Rick Scully

Slatwall is great for storing tools and equipment that you want visible, but it’s nice to also have the option of a place to keep things behind closed, and possibly locked, doors. Have a look at my blog on open versus closed storage. When it comes to choosing cabinets, all is not created equal.

You can go to the big box store and purchase cabinetry and install it yourself, but you might not be thrilled with the finished product. Let’s talk about the benefits of professionally sourced and installed cabinetry.

Variety

At retail stores, the choices are limited. You’ll either find fabricated wood, plastic or steel cabinets. Fabricated wood is not built to stand up to our Canadian climate. Plastic is not sturdy. It’s prone to cracking and just won’t hold up to long-term use. The steel cabinets available are a low-grade metal.

Garage Tailors Garage offers three levels of metal cabinetry, which I call good, better and best. Hercke is basic but it is durable, functional and attractive. Onex is a mid-range customizable cabinetry, and CTECH is a beautiful, high-end, lightweight but extremely durable product.

Flexiblity

At the big box stores, what you see is what you get. There’s not much choice in colour, size or customization.

The Hercke brand cabinets Garage Tailors Garage offers has the least flexibility in choice, but is still more versatile than the big box offerings. The big difference comes in the Onex and CTECH brands. Onex comes in 21 different colours and CTECH comes in 9 colours. But both can create a custom-mixed colour for you. Onex and CTECH are also highly customizable. Unlike standard big-box style fixtures, these professional brands don’t just stock standard sized cabinets. This is particularly useful as most garages are not a standard size or shape. The Onex and CTECH cabinets can be custom ordered to fit perfectly along the length of your wall without leaving that annoying 5 inches of unusable wall at the end. In addition, these cabinets can be customized with hardware, lighting, locks and workshop tabletops to enhance the functionality of a garage.

Quality

Online reviews of the metal cabinet brand offered by the big box guys generally repeat the same complaints: They are attractive at first glance, but are flimsy metal, the screws don’t fit nicely and the finish stains easily.

Hercke, Onex and CTECH are all made of very high quality materials. Hercke, the lowest cost offering, is made of high-quality steel that stands up to heavy use in the garage. Onex is also made of steel but is a lower gauge, which is even stronger. CTECH is aluminum. It’s not quite as strong as the Onex steel but it’s more than strong enough for residential use.

Car enthusiasts are drawn to CTECH because of the quality in the design. Its look is derived from the world of professional car racing and provides a truly unique and stylish look to a garage renovation. Also, little things such as the drawer closing mechanisms of a CTECH MotionLatch make your cabinet drawers much more enjoyable to use as opposed to low quality steel doors, which probably creak, shift and become a chore to close over time.

Along with variety, flexibility and quality, another advantage of hiring a professional is we’ll arrange the delivery and installation of your cabinets. So, if you’re planning a renovation, do some research and consider your options. In my opinion, for the money, the long lasting quality, beauty and enjoyment of professionally designed and installed cabinets far outweigh the do-it-yourself option.

Winter Toy Storage

January 22, 2013 by Rick Scully

In the great Canadian tradition of celebrating winter, sports equipment that lets you face the elements for pure fun is crucial. From toboggans and skis to snowshoes, snowboards and skates, there’s a range of winter toys that can enhance your family life when you’re surrounded by snow and ice.

The types and amounts of equipment families have stowed away generally depends on their children’s ages. When kids are little, toboggans, sleds, crazy carpets and flying saucers are in abundance. As they get a little older, skis become the most common.

Creating a proper storage solution for your skis, boots and poles is a simple way to protect your investment. The better you take care of them, the longer they’ll last. You could store your skis in the house but if they’re not properly dried out, you might end up with wet carpets or slippery floors. If they are hung on hooks inside the garage, drips won’t matter. Wherever you decide to put them, the best reason to have a designated space is so you won’t have to look around to find everything when the snow beckons.

Hockey gear is another type of sports equipment that can be found in abundance in many households. Ideally, if you insist on bringing your hockey equipment into the house, the ripened under armour, long johns, socks and jerseys would immediately find their way into the washing machine while the pads, pants and gloves would dry out on a laundry rack. But since late-night ice times are very common, most of the time after the game is over, the sweaty gear gets taken inside the house and dumped in the basement. Admit it, you’ve done it at least once.

There is a middle ground. As long as you take your under gear inside, skates, sticks, helmets and pads can be dried out in the garage so the musk doesn’t infiltrate the house and potentially aggravate your housemates. True, your gear will be cooler when you put it into the bag, but by the time you arrive at the rink, it’s more than likely warmed up. And if you’re playing on a year-round league, for three seasons it’s not even a factor.

One family I worked with didn’t want their young boys bringing their hockey gear into the house. The optimal solution was to build a locker in the garage for them to hang their skates, pants, gloves and pads using a combination of baskets, shelves and hooks mounted to an end wall. All the washable stuff went inside with the kids for proper clean up.

Winter is an amazing time of the year. An organized garage where you can protect your car from the elements, while also accessing everything you need to play in the snow, makes it that much better.

Depending on your budget, needs and taste, I can recommend the perfect cabinets and garage storage systems to accommodate all the athletes in your house. Our suppliers Hercke, Onex and CTECH offer higher quality and more adaptable products than the typical garage cabinets found in big box stores. Or if you’d like to discuss a custom storage system for your family’s specific activities which can be a better fit as well as cost effective, I can assist you with a solution to make it easy for everyone to use your garage in a way that fits the lifestyle.

Hercke Cabinets

October 9, 2012 by Rick Scully

Designs That Let You Put Things Away in Style

It’s said that necessity is the mother of invention. Consequently some of the most useful products are designed for very specific situations and requirements. But that doesn’t mean these solutions can’t look terrific too, which is why when people are interested in efficient and great-looking garage organization solutions, I’m happy to suggest three different lines of cabinets – Hercke, Onex and Ctech. All of the products that Garage Tailors Garage carries and recommends for garage transformations are highly functional and have specialized features that will appeal to various needs, priorities and budgets. Over the next few months, I’ll get into more specific details about the unique features of each product, but this month I’m going to focus on Hercke.

As the operator of an independent business, I have the luxury of choosing the suppliers and products I believe in and Hercke’s modular system is durable, functional and attractive. It’s one of my favourite storage solution systems because in addition to good design and adaptability, dollar for dollar it’s a sturdier, higher quality product than similar systems offered by home improvement retailers.

Is there a gauge distinction between big box cabinets and these?
The fully lockable system includes 30-inch wide steel cabinets with black cases and black shelves. They can be personalized with stainless steel or powder grey fronts that work extremely well in a garage storage setting and can also be utilized in other areas of your home for storage system continuity. Another key feature is they have scalable legs, which ensure that the cabinets can be levelly installed to retain their integrity even with the 5% grade slant on garage floors, a building code requirement that ensures proper water run-off.

Hercke cabinets work effectively because their storage and organization system was created by homeowners with needs that are likely quite similar to yours. The company was founded by the husband and wife team of Tom and Katy Van Hercke when they were unable to find adequate storage solutions to keep power tools out of the reach of their two young children and Katy wanted to store some over-sized platters and trays in the kitchen. Their breakthrough was developing a system that was functional in the garage or basement, but also flexible and attractive for other areas of the home including the kitchen, laundry room, office or playroom. The other important component was they wanted the design to be appealing for both men and women. It is. And that kind of aesthetic appeal and continuity is handy to get consensus on a project like transforming the chaos of your garage into an attractive place of highly organized storage, safety and efficiency.

As a consumer, you have a is a range of options, but I believe that customized Hercke cabinets are a far better value and long-term investment than a lot of lower priced, and consequently lower quality substitutes out there. Plus, Garage Tailors Garage offers full-service transformations from the design and sourcing through installation that can be completed in a few days once specialty orders have been placed. For a consultation and estimate, give me a call.

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