We moved into a new house back in May of this year. We got a much bigger garage, giving me some space to set up my own little shop area. Now that I had the room, I needed some way to store all my stuff.
I decided that I needed a set of shelves that I could run along the back wall of the garage. Somewhere that I could store my miter saw, shop vac, and all my larger, loose tools.
I wanted the shelves to be free-standing, so I could easily move them around as my organizational needs change, and I didn't want to spend a ton of money.
After much searching on the internet, I decided to make a really basic two-shelf unit out of 2x4s and OSB. I ripped a 4x8-foot sheet of 5/8" OSB down the middle into two 2-foot wide and 8-foot long sheets. Next I built a frame for each sheet out of 2x4s. I took six more 2x4s, cut them down to about 5 1/2' and attached them to the shelf frames. Then it was a simple matter of sliding in the OSB sheets and screwing them down to complete the project.
Ramona helped me slide the shelves into place on the back garage wall. Then I found some scrap pieces which I used to level the legs the best I could. Some of the lumber I made the shelf frames from wasn't the straightest, so everything is far from being perfectly level.
And here's the shelving unit installed:
I have a long way to go to get organized, but it already feels great to get so much stuff off the garage floor. I'll probably do a similar but smaller set of shelves for another area where we're currently storing all of our paints and painting supplies. In the end this was a pretty affordable project for a sturdy set of shelves. I probably spent around $50 for everything, including 10 2x4s, a sheet of OSB, and a couple boxes of screws