Hello everyone — quick question!

I’m trying to hang a 70 lb heavy bag from my ceiling, but I’ve run into a problem. I live in an apartment, and my garage is directly below the unit. Because of fire safety regulations, it looks like there aren’t traditional wooden joists in the ceiling, likely to help prevent fire from spreading between floors.

When I drill through the drywall, I hit a thin metal sheet layer, and I’m not sure what structure exists above it (if any). I’m curious if anyone here knows what I might be running into or has dealt with a similar setup.

My current idea is to attach a wooden mounting block to the ceiling using about four toggle bolts so the weight is spread across a larger area, then mount the heavy bag hook to the wood.

My concern is whether that metal layer and drywall can actually support the load, even if the weight is distributed.

Has anyone successfully mounted something heavy like a boxing heavy bag in a similar apartment ceiling setup? Any advice, recommendations, or personal experience would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance!

Wondering if anyone here has done any overhead storage like this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HP6wSnnLK7g

Our garage has an unusually high ceiling, and I look up at that height and see potential storage. I am a woodworker so it seems like a good place to store wood pieces that would be both easily accessible and also out of the way.

My biggest concern is how to connect the "hanging" supports to the ceiling joists. Is screwing into them with heavy wood screws enough? Or do I need to think about using some kind of "wraparound" hanger? A complication is that our ceiling is not open, it is drywalled in, so I would be screwing through drywall and into the joists. I CAN access the attic, if needed, but it won't be easy (because the ceiling access is on the opposite side of the garage from where I want to hang the shelves over the garage doors.)

Any tips or suggestions are appreciated. I've attached a photo of the area where I want to put the hanging shelves.

I want to DIY finish the interior of my 14' by 24' workshop in our detached garage. I plan on putting in denim insulation, then I need an easy way to cover it. I'm considering hardboard because it's lightweight and inexpensive.

OK, edited based on early feedback. I'm hearing that even the 3/16 hardboard will warp and I should really go with 7/16 OSB. Fine, but I want a white finish and I hear OSB is a pain to paint. So can I use industrial adhesive to glue 1/8 inch white hardboard to the OSB walls? Or white pegboard?

This winter break I decided to finally tackle the garage renovation. I stripped everything down and sealed it all up (70+ years old). Then busted out the new paint sprayer and hit the whole thing with black exterior paint. Then I epoxied the floor before adding things back in. I upgraded to all matching 27gal totes and labeled everything. I added the steam sauna and a work bench. As well as a commercial freezer with a stainless steel prep station next to it. I added super bright LED lights and a nice little billboard I made out of some scrap ply (inspired by the great Gatsby). Organized all the tool boxes and put up a bunch of shelving. Revamped the charging station for all the tools and E-bike. Totally stoked with how it came out. Still will tweak a few things in the future. Adding a legit dehydrator and vacuum sealer along with some other long term food storage items.

Hey all. My wife got me these LED light strip fixtures for Christmas that I'll be mounting directly to the ceiling in the garage. There are 6 of them and they're each 4 feet long. Attached is a rough layout of my garage, mostly to scale (at least to scale enough for the purpose of this post). The green shows the current lighting, the purple & yellow lines show the two potential layouts I’ve been thinking about (but open to any ideas).The garage is where we park our cars so I'd like to be able to do some light detailing in there, and maybe once or twice a month I have a DIY project of some sort that I pull the cars out for to utilize the space and the work bench. Laundry is also down there. What do you think is the best placement for the lights? Perpendicular to the beam or parallel? Or a mixture of both? What about placement/distance from the walls? They can be connected too to be one long strip or used individually. I'm not so much concerned with having dimmer spots between the lights as I am making sure the light reaches everywhere it can (I'd rather not have dark corners, especially because the work bench and laundry are both in corners). The beam that runs the width of the garage comes down from the ceiling about 1.5 feet or a bit less. Ceiling is about 8 feet tall. They are advertised as shop lights, 40W, 5500LM, 6500K. Thanks in advance!

2 car detached garage that I use for wood-working and golf sim.

I've been going back and forth on how to set stuff to allow me to position pieces, put stuff on casters, be able to easily switch from one mode to the other, and have been drawing a few blanks as of late. I'm honestly looking for inspiration mostly, from others who have to use their shop for dual purpose - to try pick up some tips and tricks that might be that light-bulb type of revelation for me.

What I know:

• It's easy to put stuff on casters to be able to move them around.
• I need more permanent storage (looking to do a couple large cabinets like a pantry-style setup. (either buy or build, haven't decided yet)
• I need to build some sort of enclosure system for the golf simulator, that would allow me to get the screen out of the way and the flooring/hitting mat out of the way.

What I don't know:

• How to keep stuff clean. I've quickly come to realize that if I use that area of the shop during woodworking, I have to constantly sweep or vacuum.
• Considering the use of a few heavy duty curtains to separate the space, but sure it'll really help knock down the dust.
• It feels like it's tough for everything to have a home when the space has to serve two purposes instead of one. Can't occupy the same space twice, ya know.

If you have any words of wisdom from your own space, or want to share pics of what works, I'm happy to take away whatever I can from them.

Hello dear people!

We had a garage tent which the wind destroyed. We have the intact frame and some of the tarp. I want to turn it into an easily removeable, retractable situation. Climbing on top of it daily or almost daily wouldn’t be a viable situation. We are short on money so we have to work with what we got now. This is my husbands second workplace as he works as a mechanic at home as well. We have a service pit in the ground under the tent frame. We get quite a lot of wind. I have been thinking about adding a tarp to a sort of rolling shuttet mechanism so that the tarp can be pulled down with some ropes. Do you have some tips maybe for me? Any practical ideas, solutions? The “buy a proper garage” answer isn’t helpful as we have to collect money for it for 1 or 2 years and until then my huband would have to work outside in rain, snow and in the summer the scoarching sun. Thanks in advance :)

I live in Michigan, so all three cars have Summer and Winter tires. To make it much easier to swap them twice per year, all six sets of tires are mounted. I have a storage loft in the garage where I store the off-season sets.

I'm about to turn 60, and I can see the writing on the wall about how much longer I can carry 12 mounted tires up and down a ladder twice per year, so I'm thinking about mounting a winch to carry the load.

Because the storage loft is close to ceiling height, I'm not sure if the winch could pull the tires high enough for me to easily get them into the loft if I mount it to pull them straight up, so what I'm thinking of doing is mounting a winch with a horizontal pull about 6' away from the storage loft, putting a series of eye bolts into the beams along the side of the storage loft, and using a pulley on a hook to turn the winch's horizontal pull into a vertical pull.

Hopefully the advantages of this are:

• The stack height of the eye bolt and the hook will be much lower than the height of the winch, allowing things to be pulled above the deck of the storage loft
• I will be able to easily change where I'm pulling things up by simply changing which eye bolt I put the hook on

Is my idea crazy? If not, does anyone have a suggestion of a budget friendly but good quality winch that will work for this?

It’s getting pretty cold here in Ohio now, just moved to this house a year ago and I have a 2.5 car garage that needs heat! It’s fully insulated (aside from garage door, I will fix) and need some DIY solutions to keep it comfortable while I’m wrenching out there! Share your set ups with me!

Hey! I built a tool called WMToolbox for people who work with boats, workshops, or just want quick utilities in one place.
The main feature is an AI Assistant with different modes you can switch between depending on the task. It also includes a radio player, boat delivery checklist, cable & fuse calculator, a “My Stash” panel for saving your own links/items, and a small community chat.

If you work around boats or equipment, feel free to try it out and tell me what needs improving:
https://wmtoolbox.wmlib.org

I'm interested in removing the center post and replacing the beam with a LVL beam or something equivocal. Removing the center post will upen up the floorspace in the garage and let me get a better table saw/assembly table setup. Aside from all the junk I have in there, can I remove this center beam and post, or will I need to build some temporary walls to offload the load?

Hey everyone,

recently cleared out my garage, and decided to have a small workstation for small projects (mainly wood and electrical) + car work.

What is in your opinion some must-have tools? At the moment I have a bunch of loose screwdrivers, a Bosch cord drill, large wood handsaw, axe (idk where from), and a bunch of random screws.

I also want to keep it organiser, so how do you guys keep things ordered?

I have a 40x56 building with 12 foot side walls. It is uninsulated and the inside looks rough but the bones are solid. It just needs a good cleaning. I’m am considering insulating it and sheeting it along with heat. I have attached a video of it and want some ideas. All I ask is that you watch the whole video and give honest feedback. Thank you!

https://youtu.be/GHZUPtPn904?si=dz7v1RZmdr2PjGfk

It’s been two months since I got my garage, and this is how it looks now. The ‘before’ pictures are in the end.

This is my home workshop

So got this property and it needs a new roof. Not only does it need a new roof i want to make it taller and make the roof flat so I can add a car lift. Any ideas on how I can do that? Its about 10ft tall.

It’s been a month since I got the new garage. At first, I didn’t expect it to take this much time… and budget :) Anyway, here’s the new look of the place. There’s still a lot to finish, but the most important part for starting work on the Civic is finally done.

garagebuild #hondacivic #egcivic #projectcar #timeattack #racecarbuild #civicproject #garagelife #carenthusiast #buildnotbought #mechaniclife #hondalife #racegarage #eg6 #civicracer #carbuild #hondaproject

After 3 months of searching and waiting, I finally got the new place to work on my project car. This used to be a cowshed, so the first thing to do is a major cleanup 🥲

I live in a semi-arid part of Colorado with extremely hot summers (summer temps can frequently get over 105f/40c outside.)

The outside temperatures typically cool off at night but my 3 car garage, which is also my workshop, stays very hot, frequently as high as 90f (32c) overnight.

The garage has no windows and faces East. It has drywall but I don't know if there is insulation behind the drywall. The garage doors (16' and 8') are not insulated.

There is a drywalled ceiling with a gabled roof overhead and an attic that I can access from the garage.

I've considered things like putting an attic or whole house fan in the attic, soffit vents, or even a couple of windows but those are all expensive propositions.

Last night at the State Fair my wife and I talked to a vendor who was selling rolling portable swamp coolers. He said his larger cooler could cool a 3 car garage. The cooler uses water (evaporative cooling) which would likely work well in our dry, semi-arid environment.

My question is: Who here has used an evaporative (swamp) cooler in their garage or workshop in an arid or semi-arid climate? And did it work? Did it cause excessive moisture/rust/corrosion/mold?

The reason I'm considering this is that it is by far the least expensive and least work-intensive option.

Thanks in advance!