Thursday 3 January 2008

How to store the big stuff

The garage had to be cleared for the building work we had done, so they could demolish it to get the diggers round the back, so everything had to be packed up or discarded. I've missed several of the discarded items already... :-(

But the good thing was we had a clean slate to start with once the building work was completed.

We started with shelves on as many walls as possible. Mostly they're just those cheap wooden ones you assemble yourself, but they're fine for the large quantity of miscellaneous stuff to be contained.

Trouble is, it's only been a year or so and already it's getting difficult to move around in there again. It's all the larger items that don't fit on the shelves that are causing the problem.

The assortment of bicycles are the main space-takers. They're stacked against one of the shelves (blocking access to the lower half), and in size order, so if I want my bike out (the biggest) I have to shuffle all the rest out of the way first.

The roof isn't high enough to hoist them all out of the way. There's no free wall space left to hang them on brackets.

They don't take up all the floorspace, so it'd be ok for them to stay on the floor if it were just a bit easier to shuffle them out of the way when we need access to something.

So I'm thinking of some sort of trolley on wheels, so the whole lot can be wheeled aside to get to the shelves behind, and a separate bracket or post on the trolley for each bike or two, so it's possible to get one off the trolley without disturbing the others.

A bit of MDF for the trolley floor, some castor wheels, and some struts to lean the bikes against, one each side of a strut. What do you think?

Perhaps I'll mock something up in Sketchup first.

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