Organize your garage with pegboard

Jerry Seinfeld:  “Have you ever noticed if a guy is out in his driveway, working on something with tools, how all the other men in the neighborhood are magnetically drawn to this activity?”

Too true.  That’s totally me.  You can see this bit here – men love work.

My neighbor across the street was making a bunch of noise in his garage a couple of weeks ago, so I had to wander over and see what all the noise was about.  He was re-organizing his garage by putting up pegboard and hanging up all of his ‘big’ tools on it.  I was dumbfounded.  Why had I never thought of that?

I keep most of my hand tools on pegboard in my basement, but the idea of storing my bigger ‘outdoor’ tools on pegboard had never occurred to me.  I visit a lot of houses, and I can tell you from experience that most other people haven’t thought of this either.  I can’t remember visiting a single home where the outdoor tools were stored on pegboard, but this is a great way to do it.

It’s cheap, it’s easy, it looks clean and organized, it’s easy to keep it clean and organized… what’s not to like?  I resolved to do the same thing as soon as possible, which was last weekend.  Here’s the before pic:

What a mess, huh?  I pulled it all down, took all the extra wood ‘hangers’ down, and threw up four sheets of 4′ x 8′ pegboard, available at any big box home improvement store.  I also bought several boxes of assorted pegboard hooks to hang all the tools on.

Total cost: $100

Total time: 4 hours

If your garage walls are covered with drywall, you can’t attach the pegboard directly to the walls because the pegs need a little room to protrude through the holes in the boards.  No problem.  Just attach a bunch of furring strips to the walls, such as 1″x2″x8′ pieces of pine.  They sell for about $1/each, and using three per sheet of pegboard works fine.

I attached the pegboard using Spax screws, which are available at Home Depot.  I keep these screws on hand in various lengths because I seem to use them for everything.  They’re strong, self tapping, and they accept a #2 square bit, which is far superior to a phillips head.

Reuben Saltzman, Structure Tech Home Inspections