Sheet Goods Storage System

One of the local BORG has a couple of “manager’s special” stacks of sheet goods that they sell for $5–$8. They’re all damaged in some way or another—corners smashed to pieces, deep marks from pallet straps, stains from who-knows-what, etc.—and oftentimes there’s not much to be had aside from particle-board. But occasionally there’s a sheet of MDF or hardboard or 1/2”+ plywood that I can use for a bunch of jigs or templates or—if I’m lucky—2/3’s of a sheet is in perfect shape. Up until now, these sheets would end up in a 4’x8’ pile of varying height in the middle of my basement family room. No longer!

During our 6-day-long power outage (thanks to inch-thick ice covering every tree branch, power-line, and any other outdoor surface—horizontal or vertical) a week or so back, I came up with a way to store the sheet goods against a wall w/o worrying about warp. This is the result.

My original idea was to store everything vertically, as the one free wall in my project/wood storage room happens to also be the only wall in the entire basement that is a stud wall, rather than furring strips over cement block. Unfortunately, the ceilings are just shy of 8’. And that wall isn’t 8’ long. So I cut three 2×4’s in half, carriage-bolted heavy-duty hooks to one end of each resulting piece, and mounted them through the drywall and furring strips and into another (block) wall using 4” tapcons. I built a torsion-box platform to get the wood up off the floor and prevent it from damaging the linoleum when I need to slide it back and forth. And I used a combination of ratcheting straps and holding blocks to hold the sheets tight against the wall.

All in all, it works fairly well, but not perfectly. The middle blocks don’t have nearly the holding power the end ones do, and the end ones tend to slide toward the middle a bit. Full-length 2×4’s would reduce/eliminate both issues, but would make the system even more awkward to use when it comes time to add/remove sheets. A better idea would probably be to build a taper jig and use it to create a series of 4’ wedges from 2×6’s, which could then be secured to the wall vertically. This would allow sheets to be easily removed, and the wedges would prevent any warp that occurs with just leaning the sheets against the wall. Oh well—live and learn.

Oh, and I received a helping hand while I was installing the silly thing…

-- Do not taunt Happy Fun Ball.