Bicycle Storage

Let’s be honest – how often do you ride your bike? I’m guessing you are hard core, and ride 1,000 miles a week, or you are just like me, and your bike takes up valuable garage real estate.

Here’s my Bianchi.  Notice how I take care of it.  She is propped up against the wall.  Just ready to scratch the beautiful blue green paint, Here’s a bit of useless trivia: Celeste is the official Bianchi Color, apparently it used to be the color of Italian tanks or something.

Storing a bicycle in the garage

Last week while I was at Lowe’s picking up some more plants for the backyard landscaping, I saw a bin of vinyl bicycle hooks for 99¢ each. Immediately I picked up a couple, and knew exactly what to do.

Getting a bike up off the floor and hanging upside down is a great way to increase floorspace in your garage. I mean let’s face it. A 10-speed leaning up against a wall takes up a lot of room. And it’s precarious at best. One little bump and it can fall over, taking with it that stack of boxes, brooms, and left over sprinkler pipe all stacked up next to it.

Finding a place wasn’t hard to hang my bike wasn’t hard. I had to watch out for three things:

1. that the hooks were NOT in the path of the overhead garage door (that would be an expensive do-over)
2. the hooks were not going to be in a place where I’d bump my head on the bike everyday
3. there were some studs I could screw the bike hooks into for stability.

The perfect place for me was on the side of the garage above the garbage cans.

First I moved everything out of the way so I had a clean place to bring out my ladder, and work.  Then I found where the ceiling joist was. I just looked for the drywall tape lines in the ceiling, and knew that’s were I’d find something solid to mount the hooks.  Positioning the first hook was simple, too.  I pre-drilled a hole with a 1/4 drill bit into the ceiling joist 12 inches away from the wall (so the handlebars wouldn’t be in the way).  Be sure to wear your safety glasses so all the ceiling sawdust doesn’t fall in your eyes.

Then I moved my ladder and put another pilot hole into another stud – 32 inches away (which is just about how far apart the wheels on my bike are).  Then all I had to do was screw the hooks into the holes.  This can be tricky, because you are screwing upside down once you start screwing the hooks, and they catch, make sure you go all the way and finish.  You know you are done when the vinyl is touching the ceiling.

The entire job took 6 minutes.

hooks for bikes

proper bicycle storage

By the way, you don’t have to buy your hooks from Lowes – I found these bicycle storage hooks on Amazon.com, and I know Harbor Freight also has them.  Just don’t pay more than a buck for each – more expensive doesn’t mean better in this case.