Garage Shelves

If you're an avid reader of my blog, which means you're probably my mother, you'll remember that I have this odd belief that garages are meant to house cars. I'm pretty insistent that I can actually put a car in my garage. In the case of Wellington Palace, and our two car garage, I have this bizarre idea that we should be able to get two cars into it. And yet, a girl needs a place to handy.

So when I came across the Ryobi Nation Dream Workshop, which manages to fit a table saw and a miter saw into a 24 inch deep space at the side of a garage, well, I was off to the hardware store. 

This design calls for two by fours and some plywood, and I'm pretty sure it's older than cars. I left a gap in the middle for my miter saw. You'll see why in a minute. There's a nice place on the end for my lovely new drill press that was a very generous Christmas gift from my brother and sister in law.

The lower areas were left strategically empty to the 36 inch mark. This area will be filled with four rolling carts, two housing power tools, two serving as  a workbench of sorts. The tops of which will all be the same height. I got the plans over at Ryiobi Nation. They called for the carts to be made out of 1/2" plywood. So that's what I used. 

 I built the one for my table saw first. And it sucked. It wobbled. It was not remotely stable. The pocket holes were too shallow and the whole thing felt shoddily constructed. This is not what you want in a cart housing one of the most dangerous power tools on the market. So after that I switched to 3/4" MDF. And I eventually remade this cart. MDF doesn't have the gaps on it's edge that cheap plywood does, which made all the pocket holes more solid. And my pocket hole jig really isn't designed to deal with anything less than 3/4" material. It'll do it, just... not well.

Notice that the miter saw is taller than the other carts. There's no way to lower the miter saw when it isn't in use like the table saw. That's why there's a gap in the shelving. The carts are constructed such that the top of the table saw is the same height as the work surface of the table saw, and the other two carts are the same height as both to those. What this means is that my two work surface carts can act as supports for work materials on either of my power tools. Which means I have to pull Husband away from his computer to hold something I'm cutting a lot less. And we both like that. 

 I plan on eventually putting some drawers into the empty spaces in the carts for storage. Because you can never have too much storage. Right now the shelf just to the left of my miter saw is crammed with hand held power tools, hand tools, drill bits, sawdust, jigs, and other trappings of handying. Hopefully in the future I can sort my tools out neatly into labeled drawers so I don't end up spending 30 minutes looking for my speed square and can get straight to the part where I'm building things. In the mean time, I tossed a pegboard on the wall to hold some of my hand tools where I can see them at a glance. Hopefully that'll help me answer the important questions in life. Like why do I own so many hammers?

Plans for the garage shelves and all of the carts can be found at Ryobi Nation.