Big Storage Room/ Bike Garage design ideas??

Arequipa

Hi! I am planning to clean out either my garage or a spare room and convert it to a bike storage, maintenance and surplus 'boy toy' room...
The plan is
-a bike rack for 2 x road bikes and 1 x mountain bike.
-box with bike maintenance, tools and cleaning gear.
-bike clothing, shoes etc
-space for turbo trainer

Possibly...
-flatscreen tv on wall to stream videos etc
-sterio system
-mini fridge for post ride drink/beer!
- few motivational posters on the wall.

That's the plan..

Any of you got bike rooms/ converted garages already: could you post some pics to give me some ideas?

Thanks a mil!

A

Beasty

I've just got planning permission to re-build my garage. Plans will remain secret for a while yet mind, but Boardsies will be the first to see the finished results;)

Arequipa

Planning permission: bloody hell!!
Looking forward to see your set-up!!

A

Micilin Muc

Beasty wrote: »

I've just got planning permission to re-build my garage. Plans will remain secret for a while yet mind, but Boardsies will be the first to see the finished results;)

Planning permission from An Bord Pleanála or from An Bord Bean Chéile?

Lumen

Arequipa wrote: »

Any of you got bike rooms/ converted garages already: could you post some pics to give me some ideas?

This is my home-made bike rack. It takes 8 bikes. I rather underestimated the costs of all the materials - the costs easily went into three figures.

If it weren't for domestic acceptability concerns I'd have just screwed the hooks directly into the wall. As it's a "temporary structure" I didn't need spousal planning permission. "Sure, we'll just put this up here and see how it works out".

Arequipa

Yea, spousal clearance is always required for these things..

Lumen, great use of space there: room for all the familes' bikes!!

A

Chips Lovell

I have given this matter some thought in the past. Two things I'd consider. Good lighting if you're going to be working on bikes. Also I'd look into drainage, for indoor bike washing.

Roadtoad

Apart from bikes, it's really tricky to do something clever with two kids (teenager) trikes. If they are hung up, they are not accessible without adult help.
Ideas?

Lumen

Roadtoad wrote: »

Apart from bikes, it's really tricky to do something clever with two kids (teenager) trikes. If they are hung up, they are not accessible without adult help.
Ideas?

Why do they need to be hung? Just get the front wheel off the ground - all the weight is at the back.

http://www.lightfootcycles.com/options-and-accessories/options/

Beasty

Micilin Muc wrote: »

Planning permission from An Bord Pleanála or from An Bord Bean Chéile?

The wife's new veranda will cost not much less than my new training facility. Plan is to get it built when she's not here - there's a fair chance she might not notice the new upstairs to the garage (pretty sure she's never worked out how many bikes I have)

doozerie

I've struggled over the course of several years to accommodate an increasing number of bikes and (mainly) tools in a small room so my thoughts on what makes for a good design are all biased in favour of minimising the footprint of everything. Also, my ideal room is a workshop first, bike store second, turbo trainer room third:

* Store tools on the wall. Boxes are terrible for storing tools once you get beyond a certain (small) number of tools - boxes/toolboxes take up space on the floor or a shelf, it's hard to find the tool you want, the tool you want is always hiding under the sharpest tool in the box (and guess which end is pointing upwards towards your hand!), etc. Shallow drawers are good, and great if you are going to sit them on top of a unit which is already taking up floor space, but tools hung on the wall is the best storage option I've found. Make up boards which you hang on the wall, attach the tools to the boards, it's much easier to attach tool hanging hardware (hooks, nails, wooden blocks, etc.) to wood than direct to a wall. Hanging the boards on the wall using french cleats (e.g. here, here) is great, they are easy to attach to the walls and mean you can move the boards around easily and quickly should you decide to reorganise the room or you can hang cabinets instead of, or as well as, the boards.

* If you do decide to put up shelves for storage then run then the full height of the room, all the way up to the ceiling, to make maximum use of space. Deep shelves are tough to make good use of, stuff tends to hide/get lost at the back of them, I find shallow shelves force me to be more careful with what I store on them and this pays great dividends when you are looking for something on a shelf later.

* If you are going to store anything in boxes, such as spare parts, etc., use clear plastic boxes so that you can at least see some of the stuff in there before you have to remove the lid and go digging.

* Don't wash your bikes in the room, water and metal tools are usually a poor mix (unless maybe if you have lots of space and can keep well away from the tools).

* If you are going to have storage/tool units sitting on the floor, put them all on wheels so you can move them around as you need. Wheels on a workbench (you will have a workbench, right? RIGHT?!...) are tricky but doable, you just need to spend more on very heavy duty wheels which lock both the wheel and swivel. If using wheels/castors on anything I've found it best to use four swivel castors rather than the conventional two fixed and two swivel which drop you into a hellish world of tedious 3-point turns to move things anywhere. Good castors lock both the wheel and swivel at the same time, should you need that, such as these ones.

* I've found it most convenient to store bikes upright. Lumen's storage unit above is great, but if you need to conserve space then you can lean bikes against each other quite safely if you are careful (and don't have young kids investigating the room who might unwittingly provoke a bike avalanche). Tilt the bikes up on their rear wheels, lean the front wheel against a wall, and stick a small piece of wood behind the rear tyre to stop each bike rolling back (long mudguards, the hateful things, can cause headaches here but you can tackle that by sitting the rear tyre on top of another strip of wood so the mudguard doesn't touch the ground). It's useful to have something at handlebar height too to stop the bike toppling backwards, the lip of a door frame would work for example, but it's certainly not essential (again, unless you have young kids). It's all a matter of getting the balance of the bike right, which is easy enough to do.

* Hang spare wheels up if you can.

* If you are going to use the room for turbo trainer sessions, allow space for a fan and preferably have a window or door to leave open too to minimise condensation building up on the tools in the room. Rusting tools can be a real problem though it obviously depends on whether your tools are made of metal that is susceptible to rust.

* You can never have enough plug sockets in a room. If you have a workbench, install some sockets on the wall just above or beside the top of the bench.

* If you want very good light, then consider fluorescent tubes with electronic ballast (there used to be an issue with older type of fluorescent bulbs where their subtle strobe effect matched the frequency of spinning/rotating blades and thereby making the spinning blade look stationary, something to be wary of if using bladed tools in the room). "Daylight" bulbs are great, they provide a very good quality of light when working on stuff, at the expense of it being cold and relatively harsh light that you probably wouldn't want in a room where you wanted to relax.

...right, that's probably enough nerdy workshop-ey stuff for any thread!

RO 06

Beasty wrote: »

The wife's new veranda will cost not much less than my new training facility. Plan is to get it built when she's not here - there's a fair chance she might not notice the new upstairs to the garage (pretty sure she's never worked out how many bikes I have)

Sounds like you need a good local builder.

Arequipa

Doozerie, thanks for all the great advice...

I am thinking MTV Cribs.. On a walk through the house: the hall, living room, kitchen, bedrooms, bathroom, the cars pit front, the garden & pool area &

Oh yea, here's my bike room...

Wanna wake up in the morning with a rack of gleaming bikes & decide... Alu, carbon ot titanium or maybe mountain bike...hmmmm decisions...

Back to real world..

Outside my garage is a paved area & a drain & tap so perfect for washing the aule rothar!!

detones

Lumen wrote: »

This is my home-made bike rack. It takes 8 bikes. I rather underestimated the costs of all the materials - the costs easily went into three figures.

If it weren't for domestic acceptability concerns I'd have just screwed the hooks directly into the wall. As it's a "temporary structure" I didn't need spousal planning permission. "Sure, we'll just put this up here and see how it works out".

Very impressive engineering solution Lumen. Can see you put a bit of thought into that. You ever forget to take a bottle out after a spin for it to pi55 all over the floor though ;-)

RobFowl

Beasty wrote: »

(pretty sure she's never worked out how many bikes I have)

Trust me, they know !!!!!

outfox

It often crossed my mind, is hanging a bike up by the front wheel bad for it? Surely the headset is not designed to take the weight at that angle?

Beasty

I've had a track bike hung up at Manchester Velodrome for a couple of years without any problem. I suspect the experts there would have a pretty good idea, and would not be encouraging hundreds of others (including team GB) to do so if they believed any damage was being done

Beasty

RobFowl wrote: »

Trust me, they know !!!!!

Well she hasn't a clue about the one in Manchester. When it comes to wheels I've little idea of how many I've got stashed in various corners of the British Isles myself!

RobFowl

Beasty wrote: »

Well she hasn't a clue about the one in Manchester. When it comes to wheels I've little idea of how many I've got stashed in various corners of the British Isles myself!

Suspect MrsFowl lurks on boards...........

Lumen

Beasty wrote: »

When it comes to wheels I've little idea of how many I've got stashed in various corners of the British Isles myself!

Corners of the what now?

Beasty

RobFowl wrote: »

Suspect MrsFowl lurks on boards...........

I keep muppetchecking myself and am pretty sure neither the Beastess nor the wee Beasties have discovered Boards yet - they may be swiftly banned if they do:D