Storage Room Workbench & Coat Rack

Finally I had the opportunity to roll up my sleeves and build something for the house. Work and life have been beyond crazy, but I was able to carve out a Saturday and Sunday to work on a couple storage and workspace solutions for the basement storage room.

The first unit is a workbench for the wife. She’s a paper artist and sometimes needs to spray glue large pieces of card stock so there is a spray booth in the middle of the workbench. No more spraying on the floor. To the right is a baker’s rack style set of shelves. And to the left of the booth is a small work bench with pegboard backdrop. I purposefully left space to the left of the unit to access existing storage shelves, and possibly tuck away loose and bulky storage room items.

The other unit I made is a coat rack. In winter we have a ton of boots and coats, but once summer comes we have no place to put them. This two level unit will hold a ton of winter gear. There is also a shelf and under shelf space for winter boots and unused shoes.

It was a very satisfying project to work on. It’s my therapy, meditation or whatever you want to call it. Challenging enough that it takes some planning, but mindless enough to be satisfying. And no one tells me what to do. I can do it my way. Which anyone who’d reached middle age can tell you, is a rewarding situation.

The storage room looks great now. We’re more organized and have some useful work space. We also took the opportunity to move the cat’s litter boxes to an open area in the room instead of in front of the storage room door. It’s all a wonderful monkey to get off of my back, and allows us to focus on the fun, “living” part of life instead of the “ugh, we still need to do that” part of life.

Overall cost was about $117 for lumber, and $40 for screws and misc hardware. It took me about four to six hours to cut, assemble and install everything. The 2×4’s are definitely overkill – but trees grow back, and it’s easy to find lumber in this size at a reasonable price. Plus it’s straight; 2×3’s or 2×2’s tend to be crooked. The units are screwed into the ceiling above when possible. The Superior Walls are difficult if not impossible to fasten into. At the bottom I placed plastic shims to level everything and I will add metal brackets to tie the units into the cement floor so they don’t fall over.

Eventually we will add lighting to the storage room. I’m thinking three overhead linear LED work lights, and then maybe task light bars over the bench work spaces.

Let me know what you think, and what you’re working on, in the comments section. Here are some pics, ask questions in the comments too…

-Chris

A rendering I made of the workbench I designed. Features shelves, a spray booth and pegboard backed workbench space.

Computer rendering I created of the coat rack design. Two levels for shoes and two for offseason coats and apparel.

Instead of doing dimensioned drawings, I printed out my design and hand wrote in the size of all the boards I had to pre-cut for assembly.

The simple frame for a shelf made out of 2×4’s. Nothing fancy; relies on screws and wood for strength.

A good trick, these 2-1/2″ screws are threaded only about 1-1/2″ so you when you screw them in, if you stop where the smooth par starts you’ve started your screw but it’s not protruding the other side of the wood. Perfect for lining things up with one hand then quickly driving the screw home with the other.

Working alone means using clamps and good screws to assemble everything.

Step one is building the shelf rack and securing it to the ceiling. The legs can eventually be secured to the cement at a later date.

Step two adds the framework for the spray booth.

Step three adds the workbench. 2×4’s are overkill for this but they’re are simple to work with and easy to get.

1×2 backing for the inset pegboard panel. Otherwise just surface mount your pegboard and call it a day.

Backing for the spray booth panels, made from 1×2’s

It’s difficult to get a good picture of the coat rack because it’s in a 5′ wide alcove in the storage room. Suffice to say it went in as planned.

The finished work bench.

Looks just like the picture. Note I put plastic shims under all the legs to level the unit and also to create a break between the untreated wood and cement in case moisture is ever an issue.

The storage room is more organized and the cat’s litter is finally moved away from the storage room door.