Any issues switching from shelves to cabinets?

[afbrian13]

Looking through these builds has been making me thinkabout redoing my garage. Ive alwys been a shelf guy, shelves everywhere!

After looking at these builds I love how clean a workspace you get with cabinets.

I have a long wall of shelves that look like a bomb. Exploded and everything laid where it hit. Cant find stuff, ocd burning a hole in my brain! I'm trying to incorporate more cabinets but had some questions.

How often do you find thingdont quite fit? On a shelf it can stick out that extra in.
When your stacking things do you find wasted space? Only 1 box fit neatly here...oh well?

Maybe its a midset that if it doesnt fit you dont need it, or repackage it. I'm just looking at my wall of shelves thinking there no way tat stuff would go in cabinets. I have tons of boxes of course, but i6 engine heads, transmissions, motorcycle engine, etc up there.
Where do you guys put this stuff?
My shelf units are great andsuper strong. They can hold an engine block-one currently has 3 transmissions on it!. Id love a seperate room for oversized shelf storage. I cant see how i could all cabinet my garage, as nice as it would look

I'm thinking I might just reorganize and add a decent curtain to cover the fronts. That would keep grinding dust, dirt, overspray off too.
Some of them look like they're going to have a restored drive on sudays car vs a ratrod build in progress style garage. Not knocking it, they look great. Some just dont seem practical.

Where do these pretty garages store long boards, pipe, scrap/fabrication material?

Anyone else have the same issue?


Just me wondering and thinking out loud,
Brian

 

[NOMAD]

I had open shelves that I hung old miniblinds in front of at my old place. Was nice to hide the cluttery look of things. I now really like cabinets instead. I don't do a ton of work in my garage and I do park two cars in it daily. The closed cabinets look a lot nicer all the time (even when its messy behind the doors).

I'm using some shelves now and will build a simple cabinet at the new place. Paint it white and it'll be nice and clean looking in the garage

 

[nolimits76]

Have you thought about using a combination of shelves & cabinets? Use the bigger items that don't fit so well in the shelves -- use the curtains if you want to hide the clutter a little.

Then use your cabinets for the other more manageable items.

I thought I'd seen a few pictures of guys doing that here. But using Google I found a before/after shot of someone that did something like this in their laundry room. It's not the same as the garage, but proves how it can clean up the appearance quite a bit.

 

[Just Mark]

The previous owner of my house put a bunch of old kitchen cabinets in my garage. I've lived with them for nearly 20 years. I'm in the process of removing some of them to put in shelving. The rest I will paint so they look nicer and all match.

I think a combination of both is the best way to go. Cabinets look great but just don't cut it for efficient storage of larger items.

 

[Kaizen]

I made cabinets 4x4 feet in my garage. Made them 1 foot deep but the shelves only 6 and 8 inches deep so I can hang things on the inside of the doors which have a middle made of pegboard. I made the shelves fixed for structure and because I wanted to screw the back to support the middle. I have had a few issues with tall things like a bottle jack and some wakward things that leave some wasted space. overall I'd stick with cabinets that are a foot or so deep but use adjustable shelves. I also have a deep shelf unit for cased tools, bench top tools, and wood. start with one cabinet and see how you like it.

 

[DonPowers]

Have you considered putting up a wall of sliding doors, about 6 to 12 inches in front of your existing heavy duty shelves, like some barn doors? The hardware is available from a bunch outlets like Tractor Supply.

 

[dfiler2]

One thing I have done to reduce the clutter in my shop is to take advantage of cold storage. In other words I noticed I had a lot of stuff in my shop that only gets used occasionally, so I moved it to some shelves in another building, it really helps.

 

[racerex]

My fathers garage/shop had shelves and my last garage/shop had shelves.....so I've been around shelves for the last 40+ years.

For my new 18x24 garage...which will be used for long-term single car restoration projects.....I'm going give a 5 drawer 42" wide heavy duty file cabinet a try. I picked up one to see how I like it. My company is in the process of consolidating office space and we moved 250+ folks out of building on the other side of town. We're stuck with the lease and we're having a tuff time finding a company interested in sub-letting the space. Anyway, we have countless file cabinets in the space.....all good quality Steelcase cabinets. The head of Facilities is my friend and I arranged to get one file cabinet to give it a try. To keep everything on the up-n-up, I purchased it from the company for $20. If I like it, I may get another 5 drawer or maybe a 3 drawer and place a workbench top on it.

I've come across a few pics on here of guys who have painted the file cabinets red to match their tool boxes. The large drawer file cabinets are great for storing odd shaped items, etc. You could also make dividers for the drawers.

File cabinets are easy to find on CL.

 

[lynnbilodeau]

Shelves are more versatile.
Cabinets look better, and keep things cleaner.

 

[Trey T]

I started out with shelves and I made pretty big investment in shelves about 10yrs ago. today, I'm transitioning to all cabinets with either drawers or doors. Shelves require a lot of effort to keep it LOOKING clean and neat.

I would never go back to shelves again unless it's in my attic.

I've done all sorts of work, from auto body to engine rebuild over the years. I just don't see any advantage of having shelves over cabinets. Having bulky items stored is all comes down to priority, bc you have to determine if you gonna use it or not. If I don't use it, I need to get rid of it instead of hoarding; it takes years for me to have this mentality.

When it comes to cabinets w/ drawers for a 2 to 3-car garage, it's important to have an efficient cabinets like Vidmar or Lista. I'm transitioning from regular drawer cabinets/tool chest to all Vidmar or Lista.

 

[Vegaman_Dan]

Consider adding framing to the front of the shelves and making wooden doors to go over them. You can keep the doors plain or dress them up with some aluminum trim or similar for a nice industrial look. Paint everything to match and it should look very comparable to many cabinet systems.

 

[kbs2244]

Cabinets look better.
Shelves work better.
Curtains are a comprise.

 

[raf0419]

I vote combo approach. Cabinets and shelves. Cabinets will hold most items. For those that don't fit, you'll. have a handy shelf.

 

[Casey69]

to me, cabinets are just shelves with doors on them? they look nicer, but that's about it.

if you can score some free kitchen cabinets on CL, that'd be ideal if you want a clean look without much expense. otherwise, going to some boutique garage cabinet outfitter is going to cost a laughable amount of money.

 

[ddawg16]

to me, cabinets are just shelves with doors on them? they look nicer, but that's about it.

if you can score some free kitchen cabinets on CL, that'd be ideal if you want a clean look without much expense. otherwise, going to some boutique garage cabinet outfitter is going to cost a laughable amount of money.

That's pretty accurate....

So...which would you prefer?

This?




Or this?



The door really cut down on the dust. If you do a lot of woodworking like me, doors are the only way to go.

 

[Steevo]

Some things won't fit in a cabinet, so you just gotta put them on a shelf.

 

[ddawg16]

Steevo...between you and me, I think we pretty much covered the bases...

 

[cruzer75]

Steveo I love the pallet rack setup! I have some I am actually going to put up in my outsode fenced in storage area to help get things off the ground. If you want neat and tidy you gotta go with cabinets so you can close the doors.

 

[Joe Reed]

When I bought my house 11 years ago I put some 16" wide white wire closet type shelves about 8 feet long over my workbench area - which is a recessed area 2' deep at the end of the garage. A few years ago I got tired of looking at the clutter and did a low budget garage makeover. I made an 8' wide by ??high (up to the 9' ceiling) face frame out of 1x2s with 4 very lightweight doors - 1x2 perimeter frames with 1/8" luaun plywood. I mounted that "cabinet front" about an inch or so in front of the shelves (to allow for overhanging stuff). Painted to match the walls.

Dirt cheap, easy to build...and solved the problem...

 

[Trey T]

Steevo: what kind of dust collector is that for your blast cabinet?

 

[Linda@Lista]

I started out with shelves and I made pretty big investment in shelves about 10yrs ago. today, I'm transitioning to all cabinets with either drawers or doors. Shelves require a lot of effort to keep it LOOKING clean and neat.

I would never go back to shelves again unless it's in my attic.

I've done all sorts of work, from auto body to engine rebuild over the years. I just don't see any advantage of having shelves over cabinets. Having bulky items stored is all comes down to priority, bc you have to determine if you gonna use it or not. If I don't use it, I need to get rid of it instead of hoarding; it takes years for me to have this mentality.

When it comes to cabinets w/ drawers for a 2 to 3-car garage, it's important to have an efficient cabinets like Vidmar or Lista. I'm transitioning from regular drawer cabinets/tool chest to all Vidmar or Lista.

@Trey_T thank you for the Lista/Vidmar shoutout! Please let me know if I can help answer any questions as you transition to Lista/Vidmar cabinets.