How to organize a garage wall

A garage wall fails in a predictable way: everything goes up at chest height because that is where it is easy to install, and then the wall is full and the bikes are still on the floor.

The fix is to plan in bands and in walls before you plan in products. Twenty minutes with a tape measure and a pencil saves you installing the same run of track twice.

The three height bands

Every garage wall has three zones and they have different jobs. Assigning items to bands first is what stops the chest-height pile-up.

The rule that follows: prime band is scarce, so ration it. If a tool has not been used in the last month it does not belong between hip and shoulder, whatever its size.

The four walls, and what each is for

The long wall opposite the car door

This is your heavy wall and the one worth spending on. Bikes, ladders, wheelbarrow, long-handled tools. Two runs of track — one at about 4 ft for bikes, one at 6 ft or above for long items — covers it. GearTrack's published 75 lb per linear foot is the relevant number here, and it needs studs.

The bench wall

A pegboard panel starting 6 to 8 inches above the benchtop, filling the prime band. Hand tools only, per the per-hook limits on the tool wall roundup. This is the highest-value square footage in the garage and it should hold the things you touch most.

The strips either side of the garage door

The most under-used surface in most garages, and it has none of the clearance problems of the space above the door. Narrow vertical strips are perfect for rakes, brooms, a folded step ladder and the snow shovel — long things standing up.

The wall shared with the house

Check what is in it before you plan anything. Shared walls carry electrical runs, plumbing and sometimes ducting, and a stud-finder reading over a pipe is a false positive that becomes a real problem. Confirm at two heights, as described on how much weight a garage wall holds.

The order to do it in

Order matters because each step constrains the next, and doing them backwards means moving things you already installed:

1. Empty the wall completely. Not partially. You cannot plan around things that are already up.
2. Map the studs on every wall and mark them in pencil. Everything else is constrained by where they are.
3. Place the bench first. It is the largest fixed thing and it determines where the pegboard starts. Nothing else should be positioned before it.
4. Install the track runs on the heavy wall. Heights first, hardware second — get the runs where the bands say they go.
5. Install the pegboard above the bench.
6. Hang the ten prime-band items and stop. Live with it for a fortnight before hanging anything else. What you reach for tells you more about the layout than planning does.

What should not go on the wall at all

• Bins and totes. They want a shelf or an overhead rack. Hanging them is a lot of hardware for a poor result.
• Anything over about 20 lb on pegboard. The hooks are rated at 10 to 15 lb. Heavy items go on track, into studs.
• Chemicals and anything that should be locked. Open walls are open. That is a cabinet with doors question.

If you do not know what goes where yet

Then the wall is not your first problem. Work out what the piles are and which system each one belongs to first — that is what the mess: start here is for, and it will tell you whether the bikes are a wall problem (they are) and whether the bins are (they are not).