Happy Father’s Day to all of our fathers on earth and in heaven! We hope everyone had a great Sunday. Lisa followed a couple of my gift suggestions from our last post (#2!), so I did pretty well. 🙂
On Saturday, I managed to install a pegboard in our garage above my workbench. While I already had a good amount of storage in there, this certainly helps with a few items. I had originally considered buying a Craftsman pegboard that is an accessory for my Craftsman workbench, but the unit costs $140. Here’s what it looks like..
(via Craftsman)
Now it’s a quality piece made from metal, but I couldn’t see myself paying that much for a piece of pegboard. Sorry Sears. Instead, I bought a 4’x 4′ piece of pegboard made from MDF from Lowes. It’s not as rigid or strong as the metal pegboard, but for what I’m going to use it for, it’ll be fine.
I still wanted a black look to it though, so I rolled on a couple coats of a black gloss paint I picked up. I also had Lowes cut it in half for me so it would fit in my car. The pegboard cost around $9 and the paint was another $10.
With the pegboard painted, I located and marked the studs above my workbench using a stud finder.
The pegboard can’t be installed directly over the drywall. It needs a space behind the board in order for the hardware to engage properly. So I installed a few 1″ wide 3/4″ thick shims that I cut from some leftover plywood. I also spray painted the shims so you wouldn’t see the bare wood behind the black pegboard.
One of the wood strips landed on an area that didn’t have a stud, so I just used regular drywall anchors for that one strip.
With the strips installed, the pegboard can get screwed right into the strips using some wood screws and finish washers. The MDF pegboard mushrooms a bit when you screw something into it, so the finish washers help hide that. Plus, they’re cheap and I had some laying around.
The pegboard uses standard pegboard hardware that you can find at any hardware store. For now, I’m using a couple hangers to keep my extension cords off of the floor. A velco strap helps to keep the cord together on the hanger.
One of the goals of this garage improvement effort is to get as much stuff off of the floor as possible. We live on a wooded lot and consequently, we get a ton of bugs in our garage. I don’t mind the bugs too much, but I draw the line at giant spiders.
No thanks.
So how was your weekend? What did you do for Father’s Day?
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