Storage Space Made Easy
For quite a few of us things have changed quite a bit in the last couple of years. The value of our homes have fallen dramatically and for many of us planning to move up into a larger home this has caused more than a few problems. If you live in California as I do, there are very few buyers and lots of sellers. You can find great deals, but what can you do with your current house since you probably can’t get it sold.
Our family unmistakably needs to have more storage space in our house. I’m a licensed contractor and could add on to our home, but with the current economic conditions that remain in the home market that doesn’t make much sense. I already had installed closet organizers in two bedrooms and that helped a lot. If I hadn’t done that we could not have gotten along without the extra storage those organizers gave us.
We determined we needed to install a closet organizer in our other two bedrooms. By doing this we are receiving us as much extra space as if we had added an extra closet. However, even with the extra storage space we were still coming up short. We had to go to phase “2″ of our scheme.
We only had room for one car in our 2 car garage and it was quite unorganized. We knew we needed to not only organize the space, but to throw away all the items we really didn’t need. We could get things out of the house and into the garage if we had organized storage space for it all.
The strategy was to add cabinets around the inside of the garage plus a workbench with storage beneath it as well as using wall space to hang items such as bicycles. We also put a small garden storage shed on the side of the house to house the garden tools and mower. This freed up floor and wall space in the garage.
By employing storage racks and cabinets that were pre-fabricated we were able to plan and utilize our wall space in the garage much more efficiently. About 70% of the walls were used to hang cabinets, storage racks and a workbench with storage. On the remaining 30% I installed a panel system with movable hooks so we could hang bigger things so they wouldn’t take up important floor space.
The most taxing part of organizing your garage is doing the garage layout. You need to invest the time to correctly plan where everything is to go so that order exactly what is needed. Precise planning is critical to the end result. By executing the planning correctly it will make the rest of the job a snap.
All in all this was a great way to get much more usable space in our existing house at a lesser cost. My family has solved our storage issues for now and have been able to do it with a small investment. By doing this small home improvement our family has solved our housing dilemma. We now have the ability to wait for exactly the right moment for us to buy a bigger home. Until that day comes we have more than adequate storage so that our family can live easily in our existing home.
If you’re experiencing a problem with storage space you can solve it quickly and easily by being able to do it yourself. It’s surprisingly easy to do, won’t take forever and is even fun to do.