Building A Home Depot Storage Shed - Part II: Shed Organization
Time to update you on The Home Depot storage shed. As I posted earlier, the shed turned out to be a fairly quick and easy build. Painting the exterior of the shed was easy and it fit right in with our cottage decor. We did customize a few details, using the trim that came with the Home Depot storage shed to create this triangular design on the doors. Reminiscent of barn doors, it suits the country setting. The final step was to get the storage shed truly functional and organized.
DIY Shed Organization Ideas
There are many ways to organize a small shed. The best outdoor storage shed organization ideas optimize your space and take into account what you're actually storing. I'll share the DIY shed organization ideas that had this small space looking neat with room to meet future needs.
As you can see, the end product looks great and we have vast amounts of storage. But let's back up to a Before shot:
This was how the shed was looking for a few weeks. It was easy to just pile things in the shed and pull them out as we needed them. We had room for all of our things (as disorganized as they were) so really, we could have just shut the doors and the shed would have functioned fine.
But Sean likes his 'man caves' organized. Very organized. I mean, have you seen our garage?? He keeps his power tools and wood scraps neater than I keep my fabric swatches and rolls of gift wrap. I tease but I secretly love opening the garage door and seeing everything neat and orderly.
Shed Wall Storage System
Which is why we put a custom built-in shelving in the shed. Let's get organized!
To create this shed wall storage system, Sean first nailed in 1x6x8 boards in the corners of the left wall. The boards would be used to hold up the brackets.
To determine the spacing with the shelves, we used the same approach we used for our kitchen renovation: take an inventory of all your items and size your shelving to fit. We knew that our biggest item would be the cooler and that would have to sit on the floor. (Side note: this cooler was a wedding gift. We had a wedding registry at The Home Depot Canada with items such as ladders, a router, and this cooler. True story!!). The cooler would determine the height of the first bracket.
For the shelves themselves we used 1x4x8 boards cut to the width of the shed. We would need three boards to form one shelf. Since the metal shelf brackets we were using only had screw holes at the tips, Sean needed to drill two additional holes in the middle of one of the arms. This allowed him to screw into the middle board from the underside and provide additional stability.
We were able to fit three shelves on one side of the shed. This left plenty of room to store our paint cans (they'll be moved inside to our house in the city for the winter), tool kits, and outdoor chairs.
We also wanted to make use of the long back wall for storage. The Home Depot shed kit came with long-handle storage brackets. We installed these at the top of the shed and they provide a perfect spot for brooms, brushes, and a rake. Below that, Sean nailed in another 1x8 board. Various screw-in vinyl coated hooks are used to hold up more tools and toys.
It only took us about an hour to build the shelves and store everything away. Sad to say the cottage season is ending and we won't be opening this shed again until next spring! Let's hope it stays this neat and tidy for many cottage summers to come.
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