# Add some more walls?



## tomp913 (Mar 7, 2014)

In some recent threads, there has been mention that there's not enough wall space to store "stuff". As I had/have the same problem, I thought that I would take a moment and show some of the ideas I came up with to get more wall space - it's still a work in progress, but it will show the basic concept. 

When I first moved into my shop (a 24' x 24' detached garage), the first thing I did was build some L-shaped shelving in a corner, nothing fancy, just to get stuff off the floor and out of the way. Then I hung some cabinets on the wall and found out that I'd run out of room to hang "stuff" - clamps, straightedges and so forth. I hung a pegboard door in front of the short shelf section and that gave me back some wall space. That worked so well that I came up with the idea of adding sliding panels in front of the long shelves to give me more space to hang "stuff", particularly tools that I used all the time and spent time looking through drawers for. Nothing fancy, just frames with pegboard panel centers, hanging off sliding door hardware. The panels are a little less than 1/3 of the shelf length so that I can access what's stored on the shelves. It's worked out pretty well, still working on arranging the tools on the panels but that seems to be constant as I buy more "stuff". I added a section of gutter on top of the 2x4 that the door track hangs from to store dowels, shelf strips, etc.

Following the same theme, I built a cabinet for storing stains, varnish, etc. and put a double-sided pegboard door on the upper unit - the outside surface is used to store layout tools - steel rules, router jigs, etc. - and the inside surface for storing painting and finishing tools - scrapers, putty knives, paint brushes, etc. This has worked well because all like tools are stored in the same place.

Hope that this gives some of the "wall deprived" members some ideas.


----------



## RainMan 2.0 (May 6, 2014)

Fantastic ideas there Tom and great topic .Thanks for posting


----------



## DaninVan (Jan 1, 2012)

Twist my arm on the little yellow bins idea. I've got a bunch (in blue) of the same things that've been laying around here, unused, for eons.
Time to put them to use.


----------



## tomp913 (Mar 7, 2014)

DaninVan said:


> Twist my arm on the little yellow bins idea. I've got a bunch (in blue) of the same things that've been laying around here, unused, for eons.
> Time to put them to use.


Love those bins, got more scattered around. I stole the design for a hardware storage cabinet from Woodsmith, modified it a little to suit me and it has really helped organize hardware - got rid of a lot of half-filled coffee cans too. The four top drawers hold 16 - Akro 30-120 bins each and the two bottom drawers 6 - Akro 30-230 bins each - and I can (pretty much) find a specific screw when I need one.


----------



## Litterbug (Nov 30, 2014)

tomp913 said:


> Following the same theme, I built a cabinet for storing stains, varnish, etc. and put a double-sided pegboard door on the upper unit - the outside surface is used to store layout tools - steel rules, router jigs, etc. - and the inside surface for storing painting and finishing tools - scrapers, putty knives, paint brushes, etc. This has worked well because all like tools are stored in the same place.
> 
> Hope that this gives some of the "wall deprived" members some ideas.


Thanks for the suggestions; I'm not even using the wall I have, but I could use these ideas even though I'm starting from scratch. Anything will be better than having everything crammed into a bookcase with my power tools stacked in their plastic boxes in the corner! :nono:

I really like your double-sided pegboard wall unit; it's exactly what I've been longing to put together since I found plans online. One obstacle has been the mystery of what the wall next to my work area is made of. I can't find studs by knocking, so it's probably the dreaded plaster and lath I've dealt with in most of the other 100+ year old apartments I've lived in). But even a shallow cabinet like the one under your pegboard unit could provide enough support for my very modest tool collection to get by with a minimal attachment to a weak wall. 

Hmmm...


----------



## PriscillaCNewman (Aug 18, 2016)

Good suggestion


----------

