Plans starting with taking out the Garage Bar

Taking out our garage bar. I think a lot of people struggle figuring out how to store lumber properly and still accessibly. Lodi built a quick solution in our garage addition a year or so ago and yeah it works great as long as we never want to access any of it. In fact Lodi has a real Tetris talent for storing stuff in the least amount of space possible. In this case though we need a different solution if I’m ever going to build anything again.

In the current situation getting any wood out that I want to work with (plus dragging my miter saw out of the house and setting it up) is such a pain in the butt that I literally just don’t build anything anymore.

…and I’m over it.

(Not to mention the three foot stack of wood (that you can see in the pictures) that’s been sitting in our garage for two months that we had no place for.)

As you guys know we’ve discussed / planned on building another building where the barn used to be but, seriously, the tremendous expensive of that so I can simply have a spot to build a bench or something does seem kind of ridiculous.

WE HAVE A THREE CAR GARAGE!

And a spot for a miter saw and lumber storage doesn’t seem like so much that we can’t utilize what we have at least for now.

So we were out in the garage the other day and it was Lodi who brought up some ideas.

Firstly, he felt we should take the garage bar out.

My cousin built it and used it for many years before giving it to us where we’ve also used it for years.

But we just don’t use a bar out here enough anymore to really justify the space it takes up.

(Especially now with our new lower deck and almost finished basement there’s just lots of spots to hang out (not to mention the whole house) that we just don’t utilize it.)

With the removal of the garage bar the whole space opened up in my head. It doesn’t look like much but that bar was actually impeding a lot in the space!

With the bar gone the plan will be to move all of the cabinets and the buffet from the right side of the garage to the back of the garage in its place.

*DRUM ROLL PLEASE*

Leaving the entire right side wall of the garage open for lumber storage!

Initially I was simply going to setup our miter saw on the bench once we move it to the back wall but now I’m kind of thinking it could go UNDER the lumber storage if it hangs high enough.

We have saw horses and a miter saw stand too so I could set it all up under the lumber storage in just a couple of minutes.

I’ll have to decide on whether or not if I want to get on a ladder to reach what I need though.

This is the storage rack(s) we ordered.

It has good reviews on being STURDY, it also tips back a little so there is no risk of the wood sliding off of it. Initially I was going to build something but I’m thinking this is going to give us a lot more of what we want for our money.

If I built a rack it would require a lot more material and support posts from the ceiling to the floor taking up a lot more space.

I love how minimal these are and am super excited to get them up!

With the garage bar gone now I’m looking at both the bench and the upper cabinets remembering I had actually planned a long time ago to paint them black and give them some chrome hardware…

So, next up, I’m going to install the lumber racks and finally get all (or at least MOST) of our material stored properly.

Than I plan on painting the bench and cabinets out before installing them along the back wall.

Of course taking out the garage bar also forced us to do some major purging so it wasn’t just the bar that gave us so much more space… Isn’t it just crazy how crap just multiplies..