Mike's Woodworking Projects

Garage Cabinets

Year built: 2012
Plan: My Design

A Big Project. Decided to wall my garage with cabinets. Wanted to do it very cheap so, built them myself. I had two base cabinets and two wall cabinets from Lowes that I based the dimensions of my new cabinets. But, I altered the design to fit the needs. One base cabinet taller than the others to put long pipe clamps and taller things in, one wider one for sports stuff, one wider one for gardening stuff. and one wider one for more gardening stuff but this one was shorter so you can put stuff on it right at the entry to the house.

I used 3/4 Melamine mdf for the carcass and 1/2 melamine mdf for the doors. Since I had lot's to build, wanted it cheap, and since it is just for the garage I made the cheap and basic.

Simple butt joints held together with screws to hold the carcasses together. Simple melamine doors attached. All made with shelf holes for adjustable shelves.

The one pain for this project was adding melamine edge banding to all the doors and the front of the cabinets to cover the end plywood. This was a lot of edge banding.

I ended up painting them because the white melamine looked pretty starck. Melamine, of course, does not hold paint well and is easily scratched but, that does not bother me since, again, these are just for the garage. Every couple of years I take 30 minutes and hit them with another coat of paint.

At the end of the project, one unfortunate mishap. I had one of the 1/2" doors on a saw horse and accidentally knocked it off and btoke a chunk of it off. The problem was, I would need a 4x8 sheet to replace it and did not have any good way of hauling one back from menards. All the original material I had delivered (a ton of 4x8 sheets). The project was close to done and I was ready to be done with the project so, just taped it back together and slapped a coat of paint on it. One of these days I will replace that door but, not a real priority.

Project was cheap and turned out well. Better than having everything on exposed shelves. Especially since with my garage being my woodworking shop, everything gets dusty so, now, everything is neatly tucked inside away from the dust.