Workshop Shelves – Finishing up the Closet Reorganization

Workshop shelves and finishing up the reorganization and purge of our workshop. One thing I learned (that I should have known and yet it surprised me) during the purge was that my bin system actually hadn’t been very efficient. Half of the bins were over half empty so they were taking up a ton of room considering what they were storing. During the purge I had already emptied three of them and knew I would be emptying at least one more once I got to my shelves. That’s almost half of the bins! Not to mention the previous shelves were also taking up WAY more space than they were worth.

In my last post I installed our new work bench and painted the closet out.

I had also made the decision to purchase some serious shelf brackets for both the bench and these new shelves so they would float.

I spent nearly $150 for 24 of them and I have absolutely no regrets! The old shelf unit (besides the half empty bins) had taken up just a ton of unnecessary space. Deciding on all of the surfaces in the closet to float will give us ALL OF THE SPACE.

Workshop shelves in here are going to be a dream come true for me!

Before all of our paints and stains were in a big heap on the big shelf in the right hand side of the closet. Out of the way but impossible to know what we have. This first shelf is going to take care of that. (Check out the photo lol I can’t be the only one with this much leftover paint!)

Because we’re not exactly grabbing for paint every day I still wanted them out of the way but at hand somehow as well.

With how high the work bench ended up it was easy to see that there was plenty of room for one long shelf above the bins and beneath the bench. Out of the way – yet totally at hand.

First up I drew a level line so my brackets will be even.

I’m installing three shelves because: I had 2x6s leftover from the old shelf unit that were plenty long enough and, you guys know me, I always try to reuse or upcycle every chance I can.

(Case and point the barn door I had been using as an actual door here is now our new work bench!)

First I cut them all to length and then stained them.

They aren’t as deep as I liked so I “stretched” their depth by pulling them out from the wall a couple of inches before securing them to the brackets from underneath.

Notice how I saved on brackets by putting them at every OTHER stud instead of every single stud like I did with the work bench. These shelves just didn’t need near as much support so I saved a lot on brackets and even ended up with a few extra to use elsewhere.

From there I was absolutely way too thrilled to put all of our paints and stains away first!

Full on adulting joy right here lol

There were a couple of cans of paint I got rid of as I am still technically in “purge” mode.

If it was “practically empty” and couldn’t be added to another can it got recycled to the dump. (I’m a little stunned at how many basically empty cans of spray paint that were sitting in here…)

With all of our new workshop shelves up and installed I moved back into the closet – emptying out another whole bin and getting all of our boxes of screws etc. up and out in the open, easy to grab!

I am SO thrilled!!

My only complaint now is I could really use some far better lighting in here so (as you might expect by now) I have an idea lol stay turned!