Garage Tour with storage questions (Video)

[RiverDave]

Greetings from the garage capital of the world Lake Havasu City AZ! I say it's the garage capital because I read in one of our local rags that we hold two records. One we have the highest garage to living sq ft ratios in the USA.. (I would believe it as a lot of houses out here have RV garages). And two we have the highest ratio of hot rods per capita in the USA as well.

A friend of mine turned me onto this page recently and I am blown away at some of the garages I have seen so far. I have also been searching for a thread where a guy took a tiny work space and made it extremely functional with flip up tables and a host of other things that I thought were pretty trick.

Anyhow instead of taking pics and writing a novel I figured I would just grab the I phone, give a quick tour and discuss the problems I have, in hopes that someone can offer some insight and solutions that are better then what I have come up with.

RD



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[langss]

You don't have a Garage, you have a Machine Shop with a couple of Boats in it LOL....Seriously, It reminded me of where I Retired from. The Thread your probably looking for is Jack Olson http://www.12-gaugegarage.com/

 

[Strouty]

I have 12'6" ceilings and I have a second level, it is short, but it works. If you don't like that idea, just go up the walls, but the mezzanine is your best use of space if you don't need the height in the area of the shop.

 

[TonkaJoe]

Welcome to the forum from Ontario Canada Dave!. That's one hell of a shop you have there I have to say. From what you showed you definitely have a good head start with things like your cabinets, pegboard, roll carts, parts bins, fastener bins, etc.. and you have things fairly well set up and organized already weather you dedicate a whole cabinet to a certain thing ( ie your electrical cabinet) or just a shelf for things that don't require as much space.
The key is to keep those cabinets segregated as much as possible and not mix the contents up in order to keep the best organization.
- Keep things like the small parts bins up off of the floor mounted on a wall
- I saw some pipe stacked in a corner by your office table, make a habit of always putting things back where they belong.. it's easy to get side tracked and forget, until that item has sat there for a year possibly lol

The thing that stuck out to me the most though... you kept mentioning the ****!. I had this issue with my garage ( turned hobby shop), I had too many things that didn't belong in the house yet didn't belong in the garage either. SO I built a nice large shed on my property. It now houses my lawn and garden equipment ( tractor, blower, garden tools, misc wood, patio furniture, etc) and it's just as clean as my shop.

Rules for something like that are simple...
- if the kids have outgrown or lost interest in certain toys either sell them or donate to the less fortunate.
- Larger toys like the battery power cars etc can go out there
- If YOU have anything out there that you haven't used in a year or more you likely don't need it
- Garden tools like the shovels rakes etc I saw in the corner on your video go out there as well ( hung up properly)
- ATV ramps go out there
- Lawn chairs and pop tents go out there if not in use
Your wife's Christmas stuff along with any other totes would go perfectly on some hanging wall shelves that are easily accessible by a ladder along the side of your garage. Keeps them off of the floor giving you space and it still looks nice and organized on the wall. Home depot sells these.

Hope those are some useful ideas and rules to get you started, best bet is to browse all of these great threads and take a little of everyone's advice and ideas to make your situation work!.

 

[JimbosGarage]

Hey Dave, Nice garage! Im a rdp member, I have met you and have posted video's on river Daves place. I know you have seen them, you have commented on them before. Any way you have a lot of space on the side of the tall garage. Maybe a tall shelve all the way across about 7' tall and 36'' deep. You would be surprised how much **** you can put up there.

 

[mrmeaner]

How bout some 10'-12' pallet racks down the long wall with the AC units - would get a ton of stuff off the floor. I have seem guys use the beams at workbench/counter height and make additional workspace areas.

 

[RiverDave]

I'd like to do some kind of cabinets that I can close so I do t have to look at the stuff.. Lol.


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[RiverDave]

Hey Dave, Nice garage! Im a rdp member, I have met you and have posted video's on river Daves place. I know you have seen them, you have commented on them before. Any way you have a lot of space on the side of the tall garage. Maybe a tall shelve all the way across about 7' tall and 36'' deep. You would be surprised how much **** you can put up there.

Hi Jimbo! Love the vids!!


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[plow]

Nice Boat!

 

[mrmeaner]

I'd like to do some kind of cabinets that I can close so I do t have to look at the stuff.. Lol.


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might be quite a project and expensive but a combination of Saber storage cabinets, pallet racking and a mezzanine - would double or triple your vertical and horizontal storage along your long and back wall of your huge RV area

 

[Trey T]

tools and supplies are the most essential elements of a shop. I would start here to organize them efficiently. THE SOLUTION: high density drawer cabinet (i.e. Lista, Vidmar, or Kennedy Bott) and wall cabinets. get rid of your Kennedy, SO boxes, and all of your other cabinets.

It appears that your tools and supplies are in too many places of the shop. I would centralize the location(s) of tools and supplies. From there, you'll be able to move forward with organizing your equipment and other miscellaneous stuff.

The boats: get a lift and stack them.

Costs: probably $10K or more.

 

[Ray916MN]

Nice shop set up!

You could very easily and inexpensively make a "mezzanine" out of pallet racking. As the beams are only 3.5" thick and have a 1.5" lip so making a floor is as easy a cutting 2 x lumber to fit between beams, it would be pretty easy to make a mezzanine that you could stand up under and on top of. Given how little stuff is spread around the perimeter of the garage, you could probably just do a single 12' wide floor to ceiling run of pallet racking and you'd be able to get everything you want to off the floor. If you want to make it look neat, just buy uniform size storage bins and ditch the cardboard boxes and everything will look tidy.

 

[cajunfirehawk]

Welcome and Killer setup!

 

[RiverDave]

tools and supplies are the most essential elements of a shop. I would start here to organize them efficiently. THE SOLUTION: high density drawer cabinet (i.e. Lista, Vidmar, or Kennedy Bott) and wall cabinets. get rid of your Kennedy, SO boxes, and all of your other cabinets.

It appears that your tools and supplies are in too many places of the shop. I would centralize the location(s) of tools and supplies. From there, you'll be able to move forward with organizing your equipment and other miscellaneous stuff.

The boats: get a lift and stack them.

Costs: probably $10K or more.

I'm going to be adding a Haas TM1P CNC Mill to the garage here in the future at some point. Depending on how things measure out I'm going to try to stick it on the machine shop side, but things will start getting cramped. If it looks like it's too cramped, then I might end up sticking it on the RV side because that's where I have the power for it already built into the house anyways. If I do that, the Roll away will end up over on that side with that machine.



Sorry everyone for not getting back here quicker. Had a ton of things going on with life, and a computer die on me etc.. (Lots of short stories, but haven't been online much at all lately). I REALLY APPRECIATE some of the suggestions and believe it or not I'm already working towards some of them! I'm going to get a small personal storage unit and just get all my wifes junk out of here, and everything in that back left hand corner of the RV garage that drives me nuts. I think at this point I'm just going to give that pool table away as well. I had always had plans to put it in there, but as said I just don't think it's ever going to happen.

The pallet racks I'm starting to look into now. I think that might be a great alternative to construction for a temp solution.

RD

Nice shop set up!

You could very easily and inexpensively make a "mezzanine" out of pallet racking. As the beams are only 3.5" thick and have a 1.5" lip so making a floor is as easy a cutting 2 x lumber to fit between beams, it would be pretty easy to make a mezzanine that you could stand up under and on top of. Given how little stuff is spread around the perimeter of the garage, you could probably just do a single 12' wide floor to ceiling run of pallet racking and you'd be able to get everything you want to off the floor. If you want to make it look neat, just buy uniform size storage bins and ditch the cardboard boxes and everything will look tidy.