Shelving ideas

[Dragster Racer]

What have you guys done for shelving. We need some basic shelves for our basement for storing rubbermaid totes mostly. 9' ceilings. Cost is a factor. Want them sturdy though.

 

[saabman]

The local Home Depot has some very sturdy 18x72x72 shelf units that support 750lbs per shelf (3 shelves per unit). Marked down from $150 to $99. I bought a couple of my garage last week.

Chris

 

[dps]

Look around for stores going out of business, all too common these days. I got a bunch of metal gondolas and shelves for $25 per 4 foot by 8 foot tall section from a hardware store.

 

[usmc_noma]

2x4s and strong ties should do you some good.

i've got metal shelving i got from a dr's office that was closing. $40 for 2 6 shelf racks.

 

[Cryptic1911]

get some used pallet racking cut down to fit your ceilings

 

[jmack]

Check out Family Handyman. I couldn;t find it on their website, but here's the article. They have plans for cheap sturdy shelving built specifically for rubbermaid-type storage boxes. All you need are 2 sheets of mdf, 8 2x4s and 8 2x2s. Will give you a 4 shelf unit that is 8ft long and 8 ft high. Tons of storage and real easy to build.

 

[Falcon67]

Sams has some nice steel racks for not a lot of $.

 

[glueguy]

For my basement I did something crude and similar to jmack recommendation. 4x4 x 6 foot posts on the corners, 2x4 x 6 foot posts every 4 feet with 4x8 sheets at the 3 foot high and 6 foot high marks. Shelves sat on small pieces of 2x4 cut and screwed to the posts. Way heavy, way strong, and way ugly, but three levels of 4 foot deep by 16 foot long shelves will swallow a ginormous amount of stuff.

 

[CrashTestDummy]

While my shop is a bit bigger than a regular garage, we've started using Sears Edsal heavy duty shelving units. Depending on sale status, they run ~$75-$85/unit, and that's for the 24X48X72" units. I have started stacking them for extra height for the light stuff storage. I'll take three units, and make two tall ones out of them.

One thing I do is replace the cheesy particle board shelves with 3/8 plywood, cut-to-fit and painted white to reflect more light. They work great, are quite stable, and adjustable. They work great for tire racks, too, just replace the plywood with 2X4s screwed into the long sides.

Gene Beaird,
Pearland, Texas