There are a ton of garage storage ideas on the internet. If you Google that term, you're
going to come up with like a million and one solutions, right? But they all seem to cost
two, three, four hundred bucks. And it takes you two whole days to assemble.
Well I found one over the family handyman's site that I really think you're going to enjoy
because it takes all your junk that's on your garage floor, puts it in storage bins, and
allows you to mount it on the garage ceiling. So I'm going to share how I built that system
so that you can do it, too. And before you know it, you'll be able to park your car in
the garage. So let's get to it! The material list isn't super huge. Essentially,
you're going to build some carriage racks out of plywood, a sheet of plywood—this
is a 2x4 foot sheet of birch plywood—and some 2x4s. But first what you have to do is
cut them to size. If you don't like using a circular saw or
any kind of saw in general, you could probably have this sheet of plywood cut at your local
hardware store—Lowe's, Home Depot—those do it for you all day long.
First things first, you got to get the dimensions of the tote. So measure the width. In this
case, it's about 15 11/16. Second thing that you need to do is measure the lip because
this lip is going to rest on the carriage that we're building out of the plywood and
the 2x4s. So put your measuring tape underneath that lip. Measure how deep it is. In this
case, it's really about ½ inch deep. So each lip is ½ inch deep. That means we're going
to use that measurement to make that bottom portion of the carriage.
So we're going to explain how to make the bottom rim. The tote lips are ½ inch wide.
So you also know that a 2x4 is 1 ½ inches wide. So if we add 1 ½ inches for the 2x4
and 1 inch for the total lip depth from your tote, that means that this bottom rail for
the carriage needs to be a total of 2 ½ inches. Now I always like to have a little bit more
space. So what I'm actually going to do is make that bottom rail for the carriage be
about 3 inches so that we have about ¾ inch here on the rail for the tote to slide on.
So I'm going to measure in 3 inches, make a mark. Do the same thing on the other side.
Then use a straight edge to draw a line. Now for the fun part—using the circular
saw. Ooh! Whew! Easy enough, right? Well, since I have
all five fingers, now I have to cut a 5-inch piece of plywood for the top portion of the
carriage. And then finally, you have to cut a 4-foot
section of 2x4. Next thing that you want to do is find the
center of both the 3-inch and the 5-inch rails. Place a mark in the center every 10 inches.
Then to make life a little bit easier, make a mark 2 inches in from the edge of both ends
of the 2x4 dead center—so at ¾ inch. Then apply a nice, generous amount of wood glue
to the bottom edge of the 2x4. At this point, get your 2-inch screw started
and drill it through the face of the 3-inch board. Do the same thing on the opposite end.
Then what you can do is take this edge of the screw and line it up with the mark that
you made right here on the 2x4. Now you can screw the one end in place. And do the same
thing for the other end. And I always like to check to make sure that
I did a halfway decent job. So take the measuring tape and measure the distance between the
2x4 and the edge of the 3-inch rail. Close enough. I get ¾ inch. Yup, that's good! Then
measure the other side. Close to ¾ inch. That's exactly what we wanted.
Do the exact same thing for the 5-inch rail. Then go ahead and put in the rest of the screws
on both the 3-inch and the 5-inch rail. The carriages are built, now what you need
to do is find the joist in the ceiling. Super simple. Use a stud finder. Mark the location
of the joist on one end, the final location of the joist on the other end of the ceiling.
Then you can draw a line between the two marks and connect the dots. And that's the location
of your joists across the span of your ceiling. Do the same thing for the area where you're
going to hang the carriages. Now in my case, whoever was working on the house before me
was nice enough to mark the joist on this 2x6 that's right above the I-beam. Woohoo!
Now if you want to be really sure that you found the joist, you can pound a penny nail
right into the marks that you made on the dry wall. Just make sure to go at least ¾
inch through the dry wall because the dry wall's probably going to be either ½ inch
or ⅝ inch. Because I promised this project wouldn't take
all day, here how you can find the rest of the joist super quickly. Take your tape measure,
put it on the penny nail or on the marks that you made on the ceiling that indicates the
first joist, measure over 16 inches, and that'll indicate your second joist. And you can do
that for the remaining ones, too. You may want a partner for this. Put the carriage
up on the ceiling and then make a mark on it on the 5-inch section of the plywood that
corresponds with your joist location. I wanted to show you something. Make the mark
1 inch in from the edge of the 5-inch rail. So right about here.
Now you can draw pilot holes into the carriage where you made the marks.
This is the part where you may want a hand. So here's the deal. You got to temporarily
mount the carriage to the joist using 3-inch deck screws. Cut a 2x4 template that matches
the dimensions of your tote. Take your 2x4 template and stick it into the second carriage.
What you're going to do is make a mark on the 2x4 that indicates the top position of
the 5-inch rail. And we're going to use this mark to mount the carriage to the ceiling.
Take your 2x4 template and stick it into the carriage you mounted already to the ceiling.
Find your mark that you made on the template and place that mark on the ceiling. This is
going to indicate the edge of the next carriage. So you want the 5-inch rail to match up with
this mark. Do the same thing with the template at the end of the already mounted carriage.
We're getting so close! We're almost done! Take the second carriage and line it up with
the marks that you made with that template. And again, we're going to temporarily mount
the carriage to the joist with 3-inch deck screws.
Because I'm so excited, and because you want to see if this railing system works, take
one of your bins, take one of your totes, and slide it in place. Woo! It works!
Drill some bigger holes for the lag bolts that are going to go in the 5-inch rail. And
you want to put at least 4 lag bolts on each carriage. So I'm going to put 2 on either
end. Check this out, baby! Woo! Yeah! That's what
I call some awesome garage storage, right? Pretty sweet!
I think this was an awesome project. A really great way to get your garage storage under
control. At least for me, I got to get all the stuff off my side of the garage in order
to park so this gives me one solution to that problem.
So anyhow, if you have a question, let me know. If you're new to my videos or you haven't
done so already, hit the subscribe button because you'll get a free video every single
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my email newsletter so that you don't miss any tips moving forward.
So thanks again for joining me today. I really appreciate it. And I hope you have a great
day. I'll talk to you soon. Now I got a place to store all my 1980s baseball
cards. Don't tell my wife. She'll kill me. Oh by the way, these cards are worth absolutely
nothing. The '80s was a total bust with regard to baseball cards. It's all sentimental value.
All right. Check out how strong these are. Woohoo! Yeah! They can hold 160 lbs soaking
wet. I'm beat. I'm going to go take a shower. Bye
bye!