Bike Cabinet

So here is the story, my wife and I moved into a small basement apartment where the is one main room and a bedroom. The result of this small place is that leaving anything out ends up making everything look like a mess. When we left our bikes out this didn't help anything so we decided to make a cabinet to store them in. We ran into a few trouble spots along the way and hope to share our advice. So if anyone feels inspired and upgrades on our design I'd love to see your improvements. This is my first instructable so any positive feedback or constructive criticism would be appreciated.

Step 1 Step one.

Safety First!

Sorry there are not more pictures of this first couple steps but there are more as it goes along.

Now, of course you will have to adjust for the size of your bikes but for ours our height was 33" for the smaller side and 42.5" for the taller side.

It is important to remember that the inside of the box needs to be big enough to hold your bike and the final structure is going to be a little bit bigger.

Material List:
1 full sheet of 1/2" plywood (4x8' any grade really, depends on how you want to finish it)
2 full sheet of 1/4" plywood (ditto)
3 2"x4" (8' long)
3 1"x4" (8' long)

We ended up having quite a bit extra scrap wood from this, enough 1/4" plywood to turn an old coffee table into a box, but because of the length you need a full sheet.

Comments

[vacationeer]

Looks really cool. I was just thinking that instead of hooking the extra leg/support onto the bottom of the shorter area you could hook it up to the inside side of the tall area ( to the right of the klenex box and just above the silver stuff sack). Just put two bolts through and use wing nuts to secure it on. just a thought! I will have to remember this if We ever move into a place big enough to keep the bikes inside :D Also major diggs on the negative trees. those look really cool! Vacationeer

[shooby]

How often do you use your bikes? Seems like a lot of work to remove them for daily use.

[Pall.e]

We use them on a weekly basis not daily all the time.. but we don't own a car so if we need to get somewhere fast this is how we get there. It may look like a lot of work... but it really is just opening two doors, latching up a hinge and pulling them out. It is far more difficult to get them out our front door than out of this guy. Our land lady won't let us store them outside, so with an awkward and less than 700 sq. ft. apartment the choice seemed to be dinner table or bikes.. and we really wanted both.. so we kicked the entertainment stand out instead and made a solution.

[bedbugg2]

hang on a second....how do you get them out!? there is a wooden beam in the way!

[Pall.e]

the wooden beam is a "fake leg" that folds up and latches when we need to get the bikes in and out, but otherwise bears weight load so that we don't have any warping and it provides stability. Because of the really tight space of our apartment this turned out to be the best way to handle the problem of getting bike in and out. there wasn't enough space to pull them out on either of the ends in our space... but if you have more space it would be more structurally sound to do it a different way as we mention in step 4. j626no is correct that it is in pics in 4 & 5, but it also is shown in some of the pics of the last step. we'll see if we can get some additional pics that explain that better.

[j626no]

the beam must have been taken out. its not there in the first pick...only the pic in steps 4/5.

[Punkguyta]

Well now that's cramming stuff into a tight space! Looks like a sturdy build mate and good pictures to boot. Good stuff chap.