DIY Garage Storage

Our DIY garage storage wall was semi-homemade – anyone can do this project! Come see all the details + the pegboard storage to use our vertical storage space on our garage walls! Affiliate links are included – full disclosure here. Thanks to HART tools (only found at Walmart) for sponsoring this post!

Since we moved into our house a few months ago, we’ve struggled with how to utilize our garage in the best way for our family.  We knew that our system of hooks on the wall & bins on the floor wasn’t working well enough, and we got creative to see how we could utilize our wall space.

(Make sure you watch the video to REALLY see how this project came together – and read to the end to the post to see what I would do differently if I’d do this project again – it’s important!)

DIY garage storage solution:

To appreciate the “after” – you have to see what we were working with before. The first picture is what it looked like the first month or two we were here, and the second picture is when we put hooks & bins in (an improvement! but not maximizing our space):

I was worried people wouldn’t be as excited about this project as we are…but when I shared it in my Instagram stories the responses proved this was wrong! Turns out so many of you also want ideas – and I’m so excited to share this DIY garage storage system with you!

While my husband could have technically built a unit from scratch – we are at such a crazy stage of life right now – and time for big DIY projects is super limited.  We decided to go with the “semi-homemade” option for this project – and I’m so happy we did! Here’s how we used our vertical space in our garage to maximize our storage potential:

Eeeee!!  Can you see how we completely maximized our storage space in here?? Maybe it makes me a nerd but I don’t care – it’s so exciting to me!

The thing that I really love about this project is really that anyone can do it.  We bought cubby units for the top & bottom of this structure, and then built in the “lockers” with plywood. It’s all attached with L-brackets and I promise you it’s a fairly simple project.

What’s different about HART tools:

We used our new HART tools (which are only available at Walmart) to complete this project…and let me tell you – we are VERY happy with how they performed. I went to see them in New York City a few months ago, and we tested them out there, but I wanted to make sure I could 10000% recommend them to you guys before I wrote this post.

The thing I love about HART tools is that the entire line is battery powered. Like – ALL OF THE TOOLS run on the 20V or 40V battery. Most of the smaller tools are on the 20V system (the 40V system is for things like lawn mowers, chainsaws, leaf blowers, and string hedge trimmers.)

I personally love how simplified this makes our tool area – we can just keep those batteries charged on our little shelf under the pegboard and it can be used for all of our power tools. It’s WAY more simplified and streamlined than having multiple brands of batteries that are specific for just one tool each.

What we thought of the HART brushless drill:

If you watch the video above, you’ll see how impressed we were by the brushless technology with our drill.  This is something I learned about from the experts when I went to the HART event in NYC – but it was really fun to see it in action during our project.  

HART carries brushless and non-brushless drills – but if you’re in the market for a new one, then we would highly recommend getting the one with the new brushless technology.  It is WAY more efficient and worked so much better than any other drill we’ve ever owned or used before. A game changer for sure!

My personal review of the orbital sander:

I really loved how well it worked.  It has a circular sanding surface, which is new for me since the other sanders I’ve had have been square.  It did a great job sanding down the rough spots of the plywood we used for this project.

The only thing I’ll advise – I wouldn’t buy this sander for a large project.  I used it to sand down a desk I bought (reveal coming soon!) I needed it to take off the existing finish on the desk – and while it did an AMAZING job – the battery lasted for about 1/3 of the desk sanding.  Again – not a matter of performance of the sander … I was very impressed with how lightweight it was and how it took off the finish REALLY well – but just wanted to make sure you don’t buy this sander for a larger job.  And if you do – it’ll do an amazing job – just make sure you have a backup battery charged and ready to go (which is what I’ll be doing next time)!

Here are the tools we used

(all from the HART line which is only sold at Walmart):

20V Orbital Sander

20V Cordless Brushless Drill & Impact Combo Kit

Here are the other pieces we used to put the whole storage unit together:

WHAT I WOULD DO DIFFERENTLY IF I RE-DID THIS GARAGE STORAGE PROJECT:

If I would do this project all over again tomorrow – I’d use a better piece of plywood.  Ours just wasn’t great – we were in a hurry and grabbed one without inspecting it.  It was too late by the time we realized just how rough it was.  It had gouges in it and chunks taken out of it on the ends.  We were able to fill some of these in with wood filler and caulk, but it would have been a lot less work on our part if we had a better piece of plywood to start out with.

Just looking out for you – I love to test these things out first & tell you my mistakes so you know how to do it even better in your own home!