Today we're going to build garage storage shelves that are cheaper and
stronger than what you can get at the store this project only takes 12 two by
fours and a sheet of OSB which together should be about 60 bucks depending upon
your location you can scale these to the length and depth that you need to fit
your space I started with a stack of eight two by fours for the shelves and I
marked them to size and this set up is going to be six feet long and 16 inches
deep which gives you the most shelving for the lowest cost I used some scrap
wood to elevate the boards off of the stack and support them during the
cutting I clamped together two two by fours and I cut them at the same time to
speed things up using a carpenter square as a guide for the circular saw helps
you cut straight along your line but it won't prevent kickback yes my first cut
of the project I already ran into an issue but this is gonna be a good
teaching moment because you could run into this as well everything was going
fine and I didn't tilt or move this all off of square but it grabbed the wood
and kicked back like an angry mule anyway that's a scary thing when it
happens just immediately let your finger off the trigger and keep hold of the saw
I moved the first piece away and I finished the cut on that second board.
when I looked at it I noticed that the one that had bound up had a decent twist
in it and the support blocks were a little too far apart and I think that
let the board Rock while I was cutting it which likely caused it to pinch in
that caused the kickback so for the rest of the cuts I move those supports in a
lot closer and I didn't have any more issues if you've got any good tips for
reducing kickback go ahead and share them below in the comments for everyone
to read you can cut your two by fours to size with the circular saw just like
I showed though you might run into a little bit of binding issues at times so
just be careful with that but a much better option is the miter saw so if
you've been thinking about upgrading to a miter saw I would highly recommend it
so when you're cutting these smaller 13-inch boards it really comes in handy
also the finish on it is gonna be a lot better than on your circular saw now the
long shelf boards are connected with 13-inch bracing and this is a perfect
place to use a stop block I set the stop block at 23 inches and I used a tinge
spacer to get it down to 13 because my stop block is limited to 15 inches due
to the miter saw fence I cut braces for each shelf and then
I moved on to cutting the material for the top of the shelves I actually
had some similar shelves that I made out of 2x3 material but they were too long
and they sagged a little under heavy weight so I unloaded them and gave them
to a neighbor to make room for this new set here's a little project that I
forgotten about and it is nice and rusty now we'll take care of that later the
next I brought over the sheet material and I set it on the two by fours which
I'll be using for the legs and this makes a great support base for cutting
things down for the actual surface of the shelves I'm gonna be using this
oriented strand board this is 7/16 thick this sheet is only about ten bucks so
it's very inexpensive and it's gonna hold up just fine because the distance
on the top shelf is gonna be very narrow it doesn't need a lot of support I cut
16 inch strips from the sheet and if you're a pro with a circular saw and you
can cut a straight eight-foot line by freehand then you got me beat I need a
little help and you can use something like this Craig rip cut as a guide but
you really don't even need that you don't have to have a fancy jig or guide
to make this cut just measure the distance between the edge of your
circular saw and the blade. Mine here is an inch and a half on the short side and
then you can find a straight 2x4. Let me rephrase that if you can find a straight
2x4 which somehow I was able to then you can clamp it down an inch and a half in
from the cut line that you want and then ride the saw against that board for a
straight cut. And making the shelves 16 inches deep let me get three eight-foot
strips out of the four by eight sheet and next I cut each strip down in length
to match the two by fours that had cut earlier for the shelves there were 69"
I used some of the bracing parts to support the offcut and another one
clamped down as a guide here and yes I realized that I should probably be able
to cut a 16 inch line straight by hand but I'm still a recovering engineer and
I have a straightedge to run against it just makes me feel warm and all
mathematical inside and also after this I could use the offcuts to get three 23
inch pieces to cover the fourth shelf and that means the only ways from this
full sheet of OSB are these tiny pieces that I'm throwing off here to the side
and that really makes me happy so next up I could start in on assembly now when
you're assembling the shelves you're probably gonna have to do it on your
garage floor my benches are not big enough to do these shelves
if you do make sure you're looking for a flat spot in your garage the floors and
garages are notorious for being nice and wavy so if you look at mine I have
actually a big dip right here and I know that that happens but if I move it back
towards my cabinet it's a lot flatter so I'm actually gonna assemble back here in
the back if you find a flat part or a flattish part of your garage assemblies
gonna go a lot smoother I laid out the long shelf boards and I marked in 23"
from each side to locate the inner braces I decided to use for braces
on each shelf which is honestly overkill but these things will not sag it all for
sure I'm using two and a half inch number-10 screws here to attach
everything and the screws that I'm using are self tapping so you don't need to
drill pilot holes but if you do want to play it safe or if you're using regular
screws then make sure you do pre-drill at least the ends so that they won't
split then I centered the inner braces on the marks that I had made and
I screwed them in place as well and moved on to the next show one thing to look
for on these is you want to check the crown the crown is basically which way
the board is humping if it's gonna be up on top or on the bottom and so this one
it kind of curves this way so I'm gonna put this facing up just make sure that
each of them have the same it going the same way because if one board is humping
up and the other one is humping down it's gonna be kind of weird to get it
assembled now I got to putting together the other shelves but I had a little
side project going with the help of today's sponsor WD-40 so here's a part
from that mortiser that I had under the shelves and it is nice and rusty it's
been sitting there for a lot of years so while I'm doing the build I'm gonna put
this in a little cup of rust remover I'm gonna use the WD-40 specialist rust
remover soak and see how much of this rust it takes off but to finish up the
shelves I added the OSB sheathing to the tops I started with the upper shelf and
I laid out the three small panels that I cut and I attached them to the two by
fours with some me nails but if your name isn't Brad you could also use
screws and when I switched over to the long pieces I seemed a little less clever.
Alright minor issue here I actually was trying to get a little too
precise when I cut these tops and there's an overhang on the end it's
about a sixteenth of an inch but it's gonna hold off the leg because the legs
go on the ends when you're cutting these tops cut them slightly undersized so
you're not going to run this issue because a little gap to the
edges doesn't really matter because you had a round over on the end anyway don't
be like me don't try to fit it too tight just give yourself a little bit of wiggle room
And while I'm cutting these ends off let's check out how that WD-40
rust removers soap worked now after just an hour and had taken off all that
surface rust with no scrubbing at all I've got to say I am impressed it's
non-toxic and it's biodegradable which makes it easy to work with - I checked
the link below for socially distant purchase options for Walmart including
delivery as well as contact free checkout and pick up so you can stay
safe and healthy during these times thanks wd-40 after I got all the shelves
put together I moved on to the legs I cut the left side legs down to seventy
five and a half inches and then I checked the slope of my garage floor for
the length of the right legs if you're gonna be installing this at the back of
your garage you won't have to go through this step but if you are going on a side
wall you need to account for the slope you can always shim it but it's easier
just to cut the legs this side that you need in the first place so I'm gonna use
this 2x4 which is seventy five and a half inches to tell me how much slope I
have across that distance I'm using some quarter inch plywood just as shims to
shim it up until the bubble gets level and it ended up being just under a half
inch drop over that distance so I cut the right side legs to just under
seventy six inches and then I started assembling the unit now since the top
shelf is flush with the legs it's easiest to assemble the shelves upside
down starting from the top I squared up the left side legs making sure that I
kept the orientation of the shelving unit in mind and I put the short legs on
the correct end and then I secured each leg with three screws and I did the same
on the other end you're still gonna be able to adjust these quite a bit before
attaching the next shelf so don't worry if they're slightly off here now to
space the shelves consistently and making one person assembly a bit easier
I cut 15 inch spacers from the offcuts of the legs I put a spacer on each
corner and I brought over the next shelf and I could lay that right down on those
spacer blocks and support everything now at this point I spend a little time
getting everything lined up square and flush so checking the distance between
where I did the first shelf and this one make sure that everything was nice and
square and that if anything was out I could change it then and after putting
one screw in each leg and getting ever in place I went back and I added two
more screws for three screws in every corner now the other two shelves go in
just like this one and one thing to look for here though is if you have any
twisted shelves where a corner stands up versus the others just make sure that
you're pulling down each corner flush to those spacer blocks before you secure
them in place if you want to build this I do have free plans available with the
Cutlass it's gonna make it nice and easy for you just check the link down below
in the description and after attaching that last shelf I got in my daily
workout by lifting this beast up and admiring the storage I enlisted to help
from my wife Susan and we walk the unit into place over on the wall but there
was one more thing to deal with before attaching it a lot of garages are gonna
have this curve that sticks out past the drywall and you're gonna have from the
effect so what I'm gonna do is take the back leg and I'm going to cut it down so
that it will fit right on top of this curb and if you have a curb that goes
the whole way you can do that on both of the back legs the curb actually stops
right before the end of the garage shelves over here so I don't need to cut
that back one on the other side so I'm just going to mark it then flip it over
cut it and then we can put it in place and attach it to the studs we turn the
shelving around and we flipped it over to cut the back leg and moving this
thing and looking at each other face to face seemed like some kind of couple's
game show challenge but I cut off the back leg with my circular saw which was
a little bit awkward but it worked out then before standing it back up
I used a magnet to find the screws in the drywall and this showed me where the
studs are gonna be. Then I marked it with blue tape so I could attach the shelves
there now we move the shelves into place and I put that back leg on top of the
curb and then I secured the shelving into the studs with 3-inch screws and as
any experience parent knows I thought about what I didn't want my kids to be
doing and I did that to make sure it wouldn't fall over we've reorganized the
items on the shelves we got some new bins that would be putting labels on
later to make it easy to identify them and the nice thing is you can fit three
bins here on the low profile and nothing will be sticking out but you don't mind
them sticking over the edge a little bit you can actually fit four of them wide
and this gives you a lot of storage options I've got some more garage
organization ideas like how I built these cabinets I've got a video right
over there and I'll show you exactly how I did that so I'll see you over there
we're gonna build something awesome