Is your garage filled with clutter? If so you could benefit from garage shelves, which will free up floor space by moving the items to the walls. Garage shelves can be fairly expensive to buy new, but thankfully you can easily make your own using plywood, a tape measure, spirit level, circular saw, miter saw and a drill.
Staying Safe
According to the BBC, you should wear protective clothing such as eye goggles and protective gloves if you are working with potentially hazardous materials.
How Big Should the Planks be?
Ideally the wooden planks should have a depth of around 16 inches, so that they are wide enough to support large items such as tool boxes. They can measure between 4 and 7 foot in length depending on the size of your garage.
Use at least three support brackets for each shelf, so that they are study and able to bear weight.
How to Build Garage Shelves
Mark 45 degrees on the planks using a speed square, and then cut the wood using the miter saw.
Now you can assemble the brackets. You can do this using an impact driver and some standard 2 inch screws. Alternatively if you want to buy affordable garage shelves, check out https://www.garage-shelving.co.uk/ for a wide variety of options.
Next you can use a small piece of scrap wood to lift the cross bracket. This will make it easier for you to screw the ends together to hold the plank in place.
Now you can use a stud finder to locate the wall studs. When you find the wall studs you can make markings where you will secure the brackets.
Next you can line up the brackets on the wall using a spirit level. This will help you to ensure that the shelves are perfectly straight, which is important – if not everything will slide off the shelves! Then you can drill the brackets to the walls.
Once you have done this you can attach support brackets for extra support. You can space these out by between 15 to 20 inches, depending on how much weight you will be putting on the shelves.
The final step is putting the planks onto the brackets and screwing them down. This will ensure that they dont move when you start to load items onto the shelf.
