During the past five days, I am working on my storage room. The room in the basement. Actually, it is not the real basement. My house is on a slope. One side of the so-call basement is totally underground level, and the opposite side is just ground.
My house looks like the picture above. From the main entrance is the middle floor. The basement has an exit on the back.
So the problem is the room I am using as a storage room has no window. It has no natural light. I can not put it for any other usage. So it is full of the stuff we bring from our old apartment and every kid’s stuff. It is very hard to walk inside.
I planned to make two big strong shelves. The shelves I bought from Costco many years ago do not have enough space and are not strong enough.
I watched a lot of Youtube videos about how to make a shelf with 2×4 lumber. This kind of lumber is for housebuilders. It is kind of cheaper compared with the furniture wood.
First I measure the space in the storage room. Then I draw the plan with LibreCAD, a free Open-Source software. I made more than 5 different plans with different sizes. The last one looks like below.
Look at it. There are two shelves. The right one is 48″ wide, about 22″ deep. the lower two drawings are for 2×4 structure and the OSB board. I can put 18 filing boxes and also put more on the top of the shelf. The left shelf is 60″ wide, about 24″ deep. I can fit 5 carry-on luggage in the bottom. I put the HomeLab computers in the middle, just half space.
I build the right one first. It is in the corner of the storage room.
I bought 10 2x4x8 SPF lumbers at Homedepot, for $44.58 with tax. One piece 3/8″ OSB 4’x8′, for $19.01. I asked the Homedepot guy to cut the OSB for 48″x22″. I need three of this size OSB. He made three cuts. I got three 48″x22″, and one 48″x30″. Oh, I also bought a box of Paulin #8 x 2-1/2″ construction screws. for $14.52
I brought all these materials from Home Depot to my home within my Tiguan.
I am waiting for the helper.
I have to rest for one day to build the second shelf. You may notice that the two shelves are different in depth. It is because the wall is not the same. One part is concrete, the other part is a wood frame. I try to make them front aligned.
The other day, I went to Home Depot to buy the following.
- 12 2×4 SPF Lumbers.
- 1box screws ( same one)
- one 3/8″ OSB board, ask staff to cut it into half first, then one cut for 60. I got two 24″x60″, and two 24″x 36″.
I put them all in the Tiguan.
Since I already made one two days ago. This time it is faster. It took me 3 hours.
See the results.
Please ignore the mess. I cleaned the cables and stored a lot of stuff on it. It looks nice and I can walk into the end of the room.
Notes:
The PDF format of drawing. basement-shelf2
