I spent a couple of hours yesterday listening to The Bugle and cleaning my garage. It’s the first time in my adult life that I’ve cleaned out a garage, and the first time I ever cleaned my own. The pleasure it gave me was yet another of the countless signs that I am getting old. I have been considering going outside to look at it all day long, and in fact when I finish with this post I am going to do just that. (I need to get some advice on some rust in the 2002 anyway, so I’ll snap some pictures.)
I’ve got garage and workplace lust now, which fortunately for me (a renter) can be sated with a $10 pack of those hang-up hooks and a slab of perforated board. But if I owned my house I would be be seriously tempted by the cabinetry available from Vault. They make some beautiful garage gear. (This professional series even comes in a yellow enamel, which is more my speed.)
Prices are not listed, because they want to get you on the phone with a “Garage Expert” who can provide consolation after you hear how much it will cost.
I think I am getting old too. For the past few months I have taken great pleasure in keeping my apartment amazingly clean, to the point where there is no more to clean. It is nice to just sit around and read in my clean apartment.
Looks just like some IKEA furniture. Nice.
Looks good, but if I was going for broke, I’d opt for Lista or Vidmar. Those setups would make almost any grown man drool.
I recommend second hand card file cabinets. Something with removable – or no – dividers and shallow drawers. Much uglier but much, much cheaper.
@3 — Yes, go with Lista if you have the resources. It has long been my goal to outfit my home workshop with Lista stuff.
Will it make me do projects better, or faster? Nah. But I could sit on a pulled-out drawer while drinking a bold Canadian brew thinking of things I *could* do.
In the mean time, I’ve put in a Rousseau metal-wrapped-wood work bench. They make some lista-like cabinets things too, check it out why not: http://www.rousseaumetal.com/
My suggestion: spend a few hours some evening planning out how you would design your garage with these super expensive cabinets. Spare no details – include all the bits that you would love to own to make your garage perfect. Find out how much it would cost. Tuck your research away for 30 days. Review it after 30 days and the odds are you’ll realize you’d be just as happy in the end with some used old crap you bought on Craigslist.
I’ve been saving for a house for the last year or so and I’ve been pushing myself into new ground when it comes to spending. I force myself to use the above procedure for anything that isn’t a must-have (food, shelter) and I’ve found that I can get almost the same high from the planning of the spending as I used to get from the actual spending. Having my own garage is pretty high on the list of reasons why I want a house anyway and I’ve looked at all of these awesome cabinets but I know when it comes down to it I’ll end up building some shelves myself or buying some used stuff that works just as well but certainly looks less cool.
Not old – mature…
@ #7. I may one day get old but i will NEVER surrender to maturity!
Lista and Rousseau were mentioned in comments above, but I’ve done a lot of research on metal cabinets manufacturers recently and both of these brands make decent metal cabinets but are VERY expensive for lacking the quality found in other well built cabinets.
Here is why I feel Lista & Rosseau are inferior for the cost associated with their cabinets:
1. Handles — they have cheap plastic handles.
2. Drawer slides — drawers should flow freely when opening and closing. Lista and Rosseau require a “lock-in” and “unlock” from the handle open and close drawers which is annoying. This makes it difficult if you were to be unloading something and your hands were full.
3. Drawers — only one drawer can be open at a time. What a pain.
4. Welding — their cabinets are not welded at all which means that the sides and tops have weak corners from not being welded, this could lead to racking. I’d look for cabinets that are welded and strong.
5. Doors — they have a single wall door with stiffener. How cheap is that?
6. Side Walls — single wall from 20 gauge metal. That means they have the same construction as a file cabinet. Thats not enough.
7. Hardware — both Lista and Rosseau use the cheapest drawer slides and door hinges. The door hinges in particular are inadequate. You just cannot make a cheaper door hinge and I dont understand why these companies dont offer a higher quality hinge that is adjustable.
8. Repairable? — What do you do if you damage a part on a SnapOn, Lista or Rosseau cabinet? Throw it away? I learned my lesson when a drawer broke in my Craftsman box and the entire cabinet is unusable because none of the drawers open. Nice!
Here are some other metal cabinet manufacturers you might consider:
http://www.baldhead.com
http://www.forgedcabinets.com
http://www.metalline.com
http://www.stanleyvidmar.com (although similar in construction to the fore mentioned Lista and Rosseau)
http://www.showroomgarage.com
@9, The one-drawer-at-a-time and locking drawer features are safety items — many cabinets, especially ones with high drawer-load capacities, have these features.
The one-drawer-at-a-time feature helps to prevent the unit from tipping over; and, in the event it does start to tip over, the drawer lock keeps all the drawers opening and spilling potentially heavy and sharp items all over your feet. If the cost of safety is that I can’t unload two armloads of heavy stuff into multiple drawers all at ones, its a small price to pay.
Good call on The Bugle.
This is in reply to ‘jordawesome’ post:
The “one-drawer-at-a-time and locking drawer features” is definitely a good safety feature for toolchests. Nothing would suck worse than having a fully loaded cabinet fall on your toes!
However, according to what I read on the Vault website their cabinets do not need this safety feature because they are engineered, and installed, to prevent them from tipping over when more than one fully loaded drawer is opened at a time.
I guess thats why they call them vaults.