We have a really big garage, but little by little the available floor space is starting to be occupied by toys and projects. In fact the moment I clean it up, and my boys see an open space on the floor, they can hardly wait to cover it with something. As of yesterday I had found random rocks that they are bashing with hammers to discover crystals hidden inside, scraps of wood that they claim to be using to make into a car, puddles of paint that they were using to paint their scraps of wood (for their cars), and a pair of socks. I don't even want to know why one of them felt the need to take off their socks out there, but they did. Have to pick my battles I suppose.
Now we only have 2 boys, but I had randomly come across 2 free bikes one day on our way home from school and I thought it would be nice to have a few spares for when their friends come to play. So this leaves us with 4 bikes to store... none of which have kickstands - because child size bikes just don't seem to come equipped with those these days. Welcome to a nightmare of bikes strewn everywhere and a tough hurdle to get into the garage over them.
If you look closely in the picture, you'll see what a jumbled mess it is, and you're only observing 2 of the bikes! There's another one tossed near the back of the garage behind that blue Rubbermaid tote and then off to the left, just out of the picture is yet another one that would keep the garage door from closing. You can also tell this disorganization is really bothering the boys too (NOT AT ALL!) as they sit there eating an Otter Pop watching me prepare to create greatness.
So I looked around a bit on pinterest and other places and found some ideas for my bike rack. I measured the width of the largest bike tire and then looked to see how much floor space I was willing to donate to this thing. In total I believe it worked out to about 60 wide and extended 24 inches into the garage. I made it using nothing but scrap 2x4's that I had stuck out back that were ripped out of the wall when we were extending our laundry room into a mudroom. I knew they'd come in handy at some point.
I placed the 2x4's that would be the support for the bike on top of the bottom frame pieces just to make sure they would allow enough room for the bike tire to slide in easily. I'm notorious for saying "measure twice cut once", but not following my own advice. ;) I found that 2.25 inches was about perfect. The tires themselves were just under 2 inches wide, so anything less than this would have made it too tight a fit, and anything wider would have allowed the bike to lean too much - which would put too much stress on the 2x4's and they wouldn't hold their position well with young boys testing their strength repeatedly.
I flipped the whole operation over, spaced the 4 sets of 2 2x4's evenly (each with that 2.25 inches in between them), and then nailed them each in place. I used 3 nails in each side of each 2x4. This might be a bit excessive - but I've been around the block a few times and watched many things I've created get destroyed because it wasn't built to handle rugged boys. Lesson learned. Nails are cheap.
Flipped it back over and I used a few of the left over pieces to create some support blocks that I nailed in between the 2x4's. I may at some point add a support piece to the outside edge as well, but for now this seems to be working well.
The final step was to add the bikes! And it works great! The bikes now have a place to be stored, but there also is room between the bikes where things like basketballs, baseballs, baseball gloves, sidewalk chalk, and the bike tire air pump can sit too. Ahhhhhh, one more eye sore and organization headache is crossed off my personal honey-do list. :)
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