Maybe the pain of storing all your stuff is still fresh from a recent move. Maybe you’ve been staring at the same mountain of random things in your garage for years. Either way, there’s that nagging sense that you should probably do something about it, and the question that follows: Is it really worth it to invest in custom garage shelving?
There are a lot of options out there, ranging from store-bought out-of-the-box shelves all the way to fully machined metal shelving systems that cost nearly as much as the garage itself. After working with over a hundred clients in the middle Tennessee area, we here at Garage Envy believe that custom wood shelving is the most robust, adaptable, and cost-effective route for most people looking for a long-term solution.
Here are our top ten reasons why you should consider custom wood shelving for your middle Tennessee garage, particularly if you live in Nashville/Davidson County, Williamson County, or Rutherford County.
Reason #1: Say goodbye to storage locker fees.
We’ve had a number of clients tell us that they were able to take all their things out of storage lockers and put them on their new garage shelves. If you’re currently paying for a storage locker, this means our shelves can pay for themselves in a little over a year, if not a matter of months [depending on monthly locker fees].
Our 2×4 lumber framing is strong enough to handle virtually any load placed on the shelving [see Reason #4], so don’t be afraid to fill those boxes and stack things up. If you need more storage than we can mount to your walls, we can also install a platform lift for up to 8′ and over 300 lbs. worth of additional storage. If you’re using a storage locker, we’re confident we can find a way to get everything out of it and into home storage.
Reason #2: Middle Tennessee storms are no joke.
Do you actually park your car in your garage? If you do, good job – you’re in the minority in middle Tennessee. The rest of us simply panic and brace for the worst when we check Nashville Severe Weather on X and see a massive front coming with golf ball-sized hail and damaging winds. We would move our cars into our garages, if only there weren’t a mountain of boxes, seasonal decorations, and tools taking up the floor space. Some of us may have even thought we could move everything out of the way in a few minutes, only to realize how much stuff we truly have and how little room we have to store it. Bless our hearts.
Custom wood shelving can be built overhead and off the ground, preserving every last inch of your garage floor’s footprint for your vehicles. Now, when you see that storm coming, you can stash your vehicles safely in your garage and avoid the potential headache of hail damage, broken windshields, or water damage. And in winter, you can save yourself the headache of scraping frost (or the occasional snow) off your car by keeping it in the garage.
Bottom line – Reclaimed garage floor space means you can finally use your garage for what it was intended: sheltering your vehicles, saving you time, headache, and potentially money for repairs.
Reason #3: Our shelves can go where others cannot.
One of our favorite jobs is building “catwalk shelving,” which runs above your garage door opening – a space that is usually off limits. This can create dozens of square feet and hundreds of pounds of storage capability that otherwise wouldn’t exist. You won’t find any out-of-box shelving that can do that. And good luck finding a fancy prefab system that will fit your exact dimensions above the garage door.
We measure your exact space, cut and modify as needed, and use ceiling joists to brace the span of shelving, ensuring that it can hold just as much as any of our other shelves.
Reason #4: Our custom wood shelving can handle any load.
Seriously…we’ve yet to have any customer report that they’ve experienced any sign of buckling or stress. John and Pete [combined weight over 400 lbs.] will often do pull-ups on our shelves at the same time, putting considerable strain on one edge, simply to demonstrate that you can’t even observe any movement in the wood. That’s the power of using a robust 2×4 frame lag bolted into studs and braced to the floor or wall, all topped with plywood. We’re sure a breaking point exists. We just don’t think anyone out there can find it by stacking full boxes of personal items on our shelves.
Reason #5: These shelves will last a lifetime.
It’s not that most of our clients don’t have garage shelving; it’s that these shelves have inevitably failed somehow. Bent and buckling metal. Rusting metal. Cracked and compromised plastic. Warped or water-logged particle board. Adjustable shelves with broken brackets.
We overbuild our shelves so they can support any load and become a permanent fixture of the house. Clients continually comment on the build quality, not expecting just how sturdy the shelves are. Who knows – maybe they’ll be a selling a point for a potential buyer if you decide to move someday!
Reason #6: You can breathe easy when your kids are in the garage.
Custom shelving isn’t just great for you – it’s great for your kids, too! We can organize their most used sports equipment and toys and keep them at an easily accessible level, while storing hazardous tools and chemicals well out of reach.
Most importantly, you never have to worry about our shelves falling over. They are lag bolted into studs in the wall and can withstand fully grown adults doing pull-ups on them.
Reason #7: You’ll have fewer bugs and spiders.
Most houses in middle Tennessee do not have basements, which makes your garage the primary haven for creepy crawlers. Our garages must seem like wonderlands to all the centipedes, spiders, and other bugs that make them their home. Things left on the floor or leaning against the wall provide the perfect covers for them. When you install off-the-floor shelving, you take away the prime real estate for spiders and bugs. Clean things up further by using plastic bins, and you’ll notice the difference in terms of how often you see things crawling around – no pesticide needed.
Reason #8: It makes your storage flood-proof.
Even when installing floor-to-ceiling shelving, our lowest shelf is often at least 16″ – 20″ off the ground. This ensures that, even with knee-high flooding, your belongings will stay dry and safe. Sometimes it may not be a flood, but a constant leak from a nearby water heater or hose that we see corrode the bottom of metal shelving into a crumbling nub of rust. Get it up off the floor and sleep easy.
Reason #9: Natural wood looks and smells great.
Customers comment all the time how great the shelves smell, and we agree! Who doesn’t love the fragrance of freshly cut pine or spruce? We also hand-select our cuts of wood so that you get materials that are pleasant to look at, sanded smooth, and precisely fitted. We also offer an option to enclose our shelves with figured Baltic birch ply, which has become a common choice for modern European-style kitchen builds.
Reason #10: You won’t have to lift a finger.
Maybe you have all the tools and know-how to build your own custom DIY garage shelves. But do you have the time? The energy? We like to think that our biggest value-add is that we get the job done quickly, professionally, tailored to your exact vision. Wake up with a garage headache, go to bed that same night stoking others’ garage envy, all without lifting a finger.
See how it happens by reading our client stories here.
Curious what we can do for you? Click here to schedule a free consultation.
