storage space Archives - Garage Tailors

Garage Renovation Obstacles

February 14, 2020 by Rick Scully

With any garage renovation project it is fairly common to encounter situations that require a bit of creativity in order to set up the best storage solutions. These situations can be broadly classified into two main categories: those that involve movable objects or materials and those situations when it becomes necessary to work around appliances or other fixtures that are for the most part not readily movable. As you might expect, situations involving movable storage obstacles are fairly straightforward to address. On the other hand, storage obstacles arising from immovable storage solution obstacles need a bit more creativity and planning. However, as you will soon see there are options available for both.

There are a few optimized storage obstacles that show up with any garage renovation project. Each of these must be handled with proper planning and foresight to achieve the optimized storage you desire.

The most frequently encountered storage solution obstacle is the central vacuum. You may have noticed the central vacuum is often left hanging there on the wall taking up a lot of space. Most new home builders mount these central vacuums in the middle of a wall, either the back wall or one of the sidewalls. Also, the central vacuum is typically mounted about half way between the ceiling and the floor. While this position certainly allows you to access the unit for service, it makes storage above and below rather cumbersome.

All of that being said, the central vacuum is actually an appliance that can be relocated relatively easily. The vacuum pipes coming to the central vacuum unit are simply common p.v.c plumbing and the electric is typically a standard outlet plug. Relocating the central vacuum merely means choosing an optimum location, mounting the unit and re-piping the vacuum lines as required. Oftentimes, the best location is found to be mounted in a side corner such that the unit is still accessible but it is mounted a bit higher and out of the way. By relocating your central vacuum, you gain valuable storage space below and of course along the wall where the unit was originally located. For example, if you relocate a central vacuum stuck there in the middle of your sidewall to the back corner, now you have the option to install slatwall, storage racks or other optimized storage solutions in the newly freed up space.

The next most frequently encountered obstacle to optimized storage is the doors and windows. Obviously, in most cases you aren’t going to be moving a door or window. On the other hand, there are practical storage solutions that can be installed to optimize the space.

Start with the door into your garage from inside your home. The most obvious answer is to install an overhead storage rack. An overhead storage rack above your door will add valuable storage space that is useful, yet still out of the way. At the same time, you want to be aware of the fact that there is an optimum way to install an overhead storage platform and there is a sub-optimum way.

The very best solution is to install an over the door storage platform using hardware hung from the ceiling. However, sometimes eager do-it-yourselfers will instead install this overhead platform and support it with vertical posts. While this is okay and does give you the overhead storage, the vertical posts can be an eyesore, not to mention getting in the way of other things you want to have in the garage.

One other scenario to consider is when the door is located in the middle of the wall. In this case, more often than not a customized solution could be the best choice. For example, you could install a combination of overhead platforms, shelving or platforms on one side and slatwall on the other side. Of course each garage design is unique so many who chose to renovate their garages end up selecting a custom solution.

Although windows are not really that common in most garages, customers with garage windows often are looking to optimize the space around the window. The one big issue is often the location of the window. In other words, if the window is in the middle of a sidewall versus being located towards one side or the other will determine the type of renovation options available. One typical storage solution option is the installation of an overhead platform with a slatwall installation to the sides and beneath the window. This option maximizes the utility of the space around the window while still allowing the full functionality of the window itself.

A minor situation that sometimes shows up in garage renovation projects is the location of the fresh water hose bibb. The hose bibb may be installed in a location that means stretching an attached hose along the garage floor and outside. Some renovation customers may choose to have this hose bibb relocated further along the wall to a more convenient location.

Alternatively, to save the trouble and expense of relocating the garage water supply, a more optimized hose reel and storage fixture can be installed. The hose reel can be conveniently mounted on the wall to allow easy access and storage.

One final situation that might be a factor is the automatic garage door opener. The garage door opener operates off of the normal household electrical outlets. Unfortunately, there is rarely an outlet mounted in the ceiling in a convenient location for the opener. Consequently, many homeowners end up draping an extension cord across the top of the garage and down a wall.

Of course, this is not the best solution and is definitely not recommended. Keep in mind that an extension cord is only designed for temporary use; it is not supposed to be used as a permanent electrical supply. The solution is to bring in a electrician to mount an outlet close by the garage door opener. Absent wanting to install another outlet, the other option is to more permanently affix the extension cord with cable clamps or similar hardware.

Conclusion: as you can see from the above, each and every garage renovation project presents its own challenges and surprises. However, with some simple planning along with a discussion of the best storage solutions for your situation you can have a garage that works for you.

Five Ways to Maximize Space in Your Garage with Overhead Storage

July 12, 2016 by Rick Scully

There never seems to be enough storage space in our homes. When we exhaust storage space inside, the garage is the most likely space to fill the void. However, with a limited amount of space, the garage can quickly become a cluttered dumping ground for the entire family.

Our garages house important items like tools, lawn and garden supplies and sporting equipment. However, mounting garage clutter often includes items that are broken, outdated or no longer needed. If your garage is overflowing; you’re forced to park your vehicles in the driveway; or you haven’t seen your garage floor in years, you’re probably frustrated with your storage situation. Before you consider renting additional storage space, look for ways to maximize your available space.

The first step to reclaiming precious square footage in your garage is to annually purge unneeded items. Give new life to an old table or dresser by repurposing or donating it. Give away unnecessary duplicate items. Toss broken toys and furniture. Safely dispose of expired household cleaners. Once you’ve pared down to the necessities, you may discover that you still have more than you can fit comfortably in your garage. To find additional space, look overhead.

Overhead space offers an ideal way to store items while reserving premium floor space, maximizing unused space, keeping items stored out of sight and out of the reach of small children and pets. With a variety of overhead storage options available, let’s explore five ways you can use overhead storage to save space in your garage.

Store Seldom Used Items on Overhead Shelving

Overhead shelves come in a variety of options. Sturdy steel overhead garage shelves—secured to ceiling joists or to the ceiling and a wall—are designed to support several hundred pounds. For safety, overhead shelving should be installed by a garage renovation specialist or an experienced professional knowledgeable about how to properly install weight-bearing shelves.

Holiday decorations, camping gear and other seasonal, or seldom-used items can take up considerable space in your garage. Such items are ideal for overhead storage because they don’t need to be accessed frequently. A small step ladder provides access to overhead shelves. If climbing up and down a step ladder isn’t appealing, try hydraulic shelves. With the touch of a button the shelf lowers for loading. Another push of the button raises it overhead again.

Lift Ladders and Bulky Household Items Overhead

Large ladders come in handy if you own a multilevel home. Yet, they can be difficult to store. Even when stored along a wall, a large ladder consumes a lot of valuable real estate. Store bulky household items overhead using overhead shelving or an overhead rack made especially for storing such items.

Keep Kayaks and Seasonal Sporting Goods Overhead

Ladders aren’t the only bulky items that might be stealing space in your garage. Kayaks, skis, surf boards, snow boards, fishing poles, roof racks and other unwieldy recreational items can either be stored on overhead shelving, specialty hooks or a customized overhead sling. A made-to-measure overhead garage sling has the added benefit of making it easier to load kayaks and roof racks onto your vehicle.

Utilize Overhead Bike Racks

It can be difficult to find just the right place to store your bicycle. A variety of vertical and horizontal wall racks are available. However, if there is limited wall space left or you already have a tight fit in your garage, overhead bicycle storage provides another good option.

Overhead bicycle storage racks operate on a pulley system that is either manual or motorized. A two-bike pulley system stores bikes flat against the ceiling and requires minimal clearance space. The five-bike pulley system, which requires 60-inches of clearance, is designed to take advantage of the generous height of tall ceilings.

Maximize High Ceilings with a Custom Built Mezzanine

Towering garage ceilings offer another exciting option for maximizing storage space. A custom-built mezzanine provides additional space ideal for storing seldom-accessed items. To accommodate a garage mezzanine, the ceiling must be at least 14-feet high and deep enough to accommodate the 8-foot depth of the platform, without obstructing garage door rails.

Mezzanines run the full width of the garage and can either be installed at the rear of the garage or over the garage door. The overhead garage balcony is accessible via step ladder, stairs or even a car lift. Light, bulky items—like seasonal decorations and off-season sports equipment—are ideal for storage in a mezzanine.

Overhead space is an untapped storage jackpot in most garages. Sturdy steel overhead shelving is the perfect place to store seasonal and seldom-used items. Specialty racks make light work of storing ladders and other bulky items overhead. Customized overhead slings make lifting and lowering kayaks, roof racks and other sporting goods a breeze. Overhead bicycle racks safely store multiple bikes while reserving floor and wall space. A made-to-measure mezzanine provides loads of overhead storage space for bulky items.

Need more storage in your garage? Contact a garage renovation specialist to discover how overhead storage options can maximize your storage space.

Strong Racks Shelving – Maximize Garage Storage

March 24, 2015 by Rick Scully

Whether your garage is big or small, it probably doesn’t have nearly enough storage space to accommodate your family’s lifestyles. Bikes, sporting goods, lawn care equipment and gardening tools take up lots of space. Then there are bulky items like tires, kayaks and roof equipment racks that consume as much space as a small vehicle. So how can you possibly fit all of these items in your garage and still have space to park your vehicle?

Last time we discussed the importance of optimizing available storage space, as one of three steps to prepare your garage for the change of season. Now we’ll consider how sturdy, steel shelving can be used to maximize the storage space in your garage.

Boost Garage Storage with Strong Racks Steel Shelving

Inside your home there are designated spaces for storing items. The closets, laundry room and pantry have racks, shelving and perhaps even cabinets. However, the typical garage consists of three bare walls. Without distinct storage space, it’s no wonder families often resort to using the entire garage as a dumping ground. The key to eliminating clutter in the garage is creating clearly defined storage space for each item. Shelving creates much-needed storage space while keeping items clearly visible.

There are a variety of shelving options available, from freestanding shelving units to garage wall organization systems with movable shelves that lock into place. Another option is sturdy, steel shelving, which does not require a paneled wall system for installation. Strong Racks ceiling shelves provide sturdy overhead storage. This reserves premium floor space, allowing room to park your vehicle inside the garage.

Strong Racks wall shelving provides a sturdy space for storing boxes, cans and other items that are solid underneath. Available accessories, like ladder and bike hooks, double your storage by creating space in front of the shelf to hang these items.

Make Use of “Unusable” Space

Overhead storage racks convert “unusable” space into functional storage space; perfect for seasonal and rarely used items. With the highest weight capacity in the industry, Strong Racks provide safe, convenient overhead storage. Available in chrome or white, these shelving units are highly-configurable. The height of the shelves can be adjusted to accommodate tall items.

Storing heavy items overhead can be challenging for some, as it requires ascending and descending a ladder with heavy items in tow. However, a motorized lift system allows the rack to be lowered with the touch of a button. Load the rack with heavy tools and boxes or bulky items. Then simply push the button to hoist the shelf back into place overhead.Push button, motorized overhead storage is an ideal solution for storing large, bulky items like kayaks, canoes and roof rack equipment carriers.

The Key Advantages of the Strong Racks Steel Shelving System

Strong Racks provides an excellent system for getting items off of your garage floor by utilizing what is normally considered unusable space. While other overhead shelving system are available, Strong Racks shelving is superior in these key areas:

Strength:

The Strong Racks mounting rack is the thickest and strongest in the industry. It is made of strong, 11-gauge steel, not the low-cost angle iron, or steel straps used by some competitors.
The square tubes used to hang the racks are made of strong steel.
Each overhead rack holds up to 750 pounds. Wall mounted overhead racks can accommodate up to 1,000 pounds.

Safety:

Each 4’x8’ section is secured to four ceiling trusses with sixteen, three-inch screws. This distributes the weight over a wider area of the ceiling, ensuring that each rack remains firmly and safely attached.
Sixteen bolts are used to secure the grid system to the rails, for added strength and safety.
The exclusive, patented rail brackets used to secure shelving allows the shelf to be secured to a wall, for additional safety and increased weight capacity.
A two-inch safety lip surrounds each shelving unit to prevent items from inadvertently being shoved off of shelves.

Quality:

Strong Racks are backed by a lifetime guarantee, when professionally installed.
The durable ceiling assembly uses thirteen pieces of hardware to attach the shelving to the ceiling.
The quality construction and installation of each rack eliminates movement in installed shelves.

Flexibility:

Strong Racks come in depths of 2, 3 and 4-feet, to accommodate items of all sizes.
Multiple Strong Racks can be mounted in a variety of configurations, creating up to 99 different platforms sizes, to easily accommodate your specific storage needs.
Two square steel tubes are used per mounting rack, allowing the height of each rack to be adjusted between 27.5 and 41.5 inches.
The Super Drop system adjusts platform height between 40 and 96 inches from the ceiling, to allow racks to be hung at an accessible height, even in garages with high ceilings.

Strong Racks can be purchased for DIY installation, or be installed by a garage renovation specialist. However, these racks are made to hold a considerable amount of weight overhead. It is crucial that they are installed correctly to ensure your family’s safety.Also, when installed professionally, Strong Racks come with a lifetime guarantee.

Garages haven’t changed much in the past few decades, but our lifestyles have. Homeowners want a garage that will accommodate their active lifestyles and provide space to park the cars. The installation of Strong Racks steel shelving is a simple way to transform your garage from a chaotic dumping ground to an organized space with designated spots to store all of the things you need. Are you ready to transform your garage with Strong Racks overhead or motorized shelving? Request your free consultation today.

Would you prefer to keep items in your garage stored out-of-sight, rather than on-display on shelves? Next time we’ll discuss how to keep your clutter under wraps, without breaking the bank, by installing laminate cabinetry.

Professional Storage Solutions – Overhead Storage

July 23, 2013 by Rick Scully

If you are a regular reader of my blogs, you’ll know that I write a lot about finding storage space in the garage that isn’t obvious. One of my favourite places to store things is on the ceiling. Many garages, especially in newly built homes, have high ceilings (10-14 feet) that can accommodate shelving and platforms. To conclude my series of blogs on doing it yourself versus hiring a professional garage company, I’ll talk about ways to create room for storage in this often neglected area of the garage.

The big box option

If you check out the offerings at the big box stores, you’ll likely find limited choice, if any at all. All I’ve found there is a 4-x4-foot steel rack that can be attached to the ceiling. This doesn’t provide much storage space and because it is open on all sides, this makes it difficult to reach items stored in the middle. Also, this option often doesn’t support a lot of weight.

Do-it-yourself

If you want to store a lot of items overhead, you can do it yourself by building wooden shelves and platforms. It’s do-able, but you need to be confident in your skills. You need to understand weight and load to ensure it’s safe. You’ll also need the right tools and a vehicle big enough to transport wood and sheets of plywood. The other option is to order overhead storage from an online retailer, but then you run into the costs of shipping and duty if it has to come across the border.

Consult a professional

Using a professional garage company, such as Garage Tailors Garage, provides multiple options. If you want to go with ready-made, we offer a sturdy 4-x-8 foot steel storage rack. We install it securely into the ceiling joists and the poles can extend from 16 to 34 inches. It will take up to 750 lbs of weight.

Steel racks are great for spaces such as over the garage door and for storing seasonal items that you don’t need access to on a regular basis. But they are also limiting because the size will not adjust to use all of the available space. If you choose customized overhead storage, the possibilities are almost endless.

Custom overhead wood platforms allow us to design and build shelving that is safe and can store many heavy items such as tires. We can design shelving or platforms to make use of odd-shaped corners and maximize cubic storage area of any garage. Our custom platforms are attached to the ceiling with aircraft cable. This allows the shelf to support significantly more weight than anything you could purchase retail. We can then finish the underside with melamine or drywall, and even install pot lights to add focused lighting.

If you’re thinking about renovating your garage, decide on your budget and weigh your options carefully. If you’re handy at all, doing it yourself may seem like an obvious choice. But doing a full garage renovation can be as much work as a basement or kitchen, so a professional can help you save time as well as a headache or two.

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