DIY Bike Garage and other Bike Storage Tips
How we transformed our 1-car garage into an 11-bike garage for Free
Less Friction, More Biking
Why is Storage Important?
If you’re like us, your bike is your baby. In our case, our family of 3 has 10 babies (make that 11 as of an hour ago), and I promise, they all serve a purpose. We primarily use bikes for transportation, biking to school-work-grocery store and other life errands…but we also enjoy recreational riding: bike touring, bike camping, traveling by plane-train-bus with our bike, mountain biking and racing cyclocross.
When you use your bike everydamnday for transportation, it should be easier to get rolling on your bike than in your car. If you find yourself playing Barrel of Monkeys with bikes to leave or return to your house, you’re not bookending an otherwise joyous experience.
Friction Happens
More sophisticated biking countries have figured the friction points, eliminating or reducing them to make biking the most convenient choice. What is bike storage friction? It’s the time, physical effort and negotiation with your loved ones and neighbors required to park or start riding your bike. Examples include lifting your bike on the ceiling or wall (sometimes sending you to the chiropractor), carrying up or down stairs and wondering where that loose bolt or part scurried off to, running the gauntlet of two heavy swinging doors, ramming your shin into your pedal and seeing red for 5 long seconds, swearing because you forgot to charge your ebike, rolling your eyes at your spouse because they took your bike parking spot or the worst, finding your bike stolen. Your bike is supposed to be your happy place and this type of friction detracts from that happy place.
This blog post will help you identify your bike storage dreamworld, find friction points and design a better system for free or low cost.
Qualities of Bike Storage Zen
Secure - bike can be locked to a permanent fixture, behind a door or both.
Covered - water and cold temperatures can take a toll on bike parts. This is less of a concern if you live in a routinely dry place during the summer, but in Finland (very high biking culture, where they bike year ‘round in single digit temps, this is a big deal. Alternatively, invest in a “winter beater bike”.
Convenience - bike can be ridden or stored with minimal effort meaning no stairs, doors or lifting for heavy bikes
Space - Think of tools on a peg board and imagine if you could draw an outline on the floor or wall where your bike lives and that was its permanent home. Don’t plan on swapping front or back positions with your roommate or partner because that will lead to needless friction and you will ride less
Accessory Storage - accessories include helmets, locks, lights, bags and your rain or snow gear. This space doesn’t necessarily have to be right next to your bike, but it helps
Bike Storage Looks Different for Each Person, Home, Bike and Commute
Unless you have an identical twin who lives in the same house, with the same bike and commutes to the same location, every person is in a unique situation. If you plan to move soon, pay attention to 1) bike commute distance and routes, 2) housing with secure, indoor bike storage (or rentable space nearby) and 3) convenient, grab-n-go spot for your bike bag and cold or rain accessories. But, there is a good chance you aren’t moving anytime soon so let’s work with what you have.
Single Family Home with A Garage
A garage that you solely control presents the easiest of all bike storage solutions and it’s up to you to prioritize which transportation modes, gear and stuff are the most important, as you’ll see with our remodel below. I’m a firm believer in parking your bikes and car in the garage, because isn’t that the whole point of a garage? Otherwise, you accumulate stuff you don’t need. But we only had a single car garage, so guess what, the bikes live in it and the truck is outside in the elements.
Single Family Home with no Garage
Even when you don’t have a garage, there are still many storage options including roof overhangs, front porch, driveway, a bike shed or your backyard. It’s all about how you lock the bike up.
Dero’s lockable bike locker is a great solution for multiple story buildings with no storage, no elevators and/or cargo bike owners. Look at how dry, clean and rust free those bikes are!
If our (then 6 year old) daughter can bike in the snow, so can you.
Apartment or Condo
Contrary to perceived norms, parking for your car is becoming a second choice amenity to secure, indoor or covered bike storage and developers are finally taking notice. Build the free, indoor bike storage, provide car share parking spots and charge for the personal vehicle parking spot. Or, take it one step further like Malmo, Sweden’s Cykelhurst, which boasts elevators, hallways and doors that accommodate large cargo bikes so you can ride your bike from the grocery store to your kitchen!
Dense City
One day North America will catch up to Scandinavia and build bike parking garages (video above), codify bike elevators and indoor bike storage, but until they do, living in the city in a multi-story building presents the greatest challenge to secure, covered and convenient bike storage. But, it’s not impossible. Cities like New York mandate bringing your bike in buildings and a company named Oonee builds beautiful multi-bike pods for cities.
First, talk to our building manager. They may have an idea on indoor solutions or outdoor sidewalk space where you can install a bike locker. The cheapest option is to get a bike cover, a couple heavy duty locks and lock to a bike rack. I’ve linked a few products below.
Solution categories
Locks and bike covers
Our Bike Garage Remodel
I couldn’t help chuckle at the irony of turning our 1-car garage into an 11-bike garage right as this Washington Post article, “If You’re Planning a New Garage, Go Big” was published. Here we were bucking a depressing Garage Mahal trend to keep what we have, get rid of stuff we don’t need and kick our vehicle out in place of bikes. I think investing in supersized garages are a horrible real estate decision, mostly for resiliency and consumerism reasons, but that’s a whole different blog post. Let’s keep this positive.
Embracing the love fest for Marie Kondo, I wanted to apply her “sparking joy principle” to our garage, with the caveat that 90% of the items would spark joy for utilitarian purposes.
Problems
A perfect bike garage to us would have the following elements:
automatic, wide door with no threshold to make rolling in/out with heavy bike easy
floor storage for heavy ebikes and cargo bikes
priority hanging storage for frequent transportation bikes
non-priority hanging storage for recreation bikes: mountain, road, touring
storage shelving for helmets, spare tires and large bike parts
drawers for locks, lights and small bike accessories
mud room functionality with storage for our shoes, boots, coats, jackets, hats, gloves, mittens and scarves
workbench for tools, home remodeling and bike maintenance
accessible storage for camping and outdoor gear
Before / After Photos of our Garage
Our garage before had all these elements, but not fully realized. Our family of 3 was constantly vying for priority bike space, bikes were falling over and hooked around each other, we incurred multiple shin injuries (and strong words) from pedals, there was no workspace and it was hard to get to our camping gear and bike accessories.
Our Process
To tackle the reorganization of the garage, we took the following steps:
Listed our priorities and dream world
We designed and built an outdoor closet to store materials impervious to damp conditions like paint, tile and plumbing materials
Measured the garage
Measured the storage systems
Drew a design plan by starting with bikes, mudroom storage and outdoor gear storage
Moved everything out of the garage
Moved our storage shelving and put everything back
Moved kitchen and laundry cabinets and drawers, filled and organized them. We happen to be remodeling our kitchen soon and didn’t want to see the old cabinets go to waste.
Hung the priority bikes first and then the non-priority
Rolled the cargo and electric bikes into their spots
Made our bike garage door into a grand entry with architectural details
Live in Marie Kondo-esque bike storage joy
Design and “Gantt chart” for our garage remodel
After
Our first step was building an outdoor closet on our patio to move all the home repair materials that are impervious to weather. We installed existing metro shelving that we owned and filled it up, making a lot more room in our garage.
AFTER - Outdoor storage closet for building materials and one hiding daughter.
Camping and outdoor gear storage was moved to the back of the garage, an area for vertical wood and building scraps was created and we moved an IKEA kitchen island outside to become the work bench. The hanging cabinets were removed from our laundry room to store work bench related supplies.
AFTER - Facing the back of the garage
Bikes were moved to the front of the garage with floor storage for the heavy bikes, hanging storage for the priority bikes and elevated hanging storage for the bikes we don’t use very often.
With a kitchen remodel expected, we moved the white drawers and former laundry closet organization system outside for mud room functionality. Note the padded seat for sitting down and putting on or removing shoes.
AFTER - Facing the front of the garage
No more “Barrel of Monkeys” game with our bikes.
AFTER
Taking the mud room functionality further, I wanted all our jackets, coats, outdoor shoes, bike accessories, mittens, gloves, hats, shopping bags, etc. to have a home right by the front door. Knowing that a set of drawers and closet organizer wasn’t going to have a home in our future kitchen remodel, we moved them to the garage and voila!
AFTER - Repurposed laundry room storage
All our hats, gloves, mittens, scarves, bike panniers and easily accessible and we have a bench seat to take off our shoes.
AFTER
We originally bought an IKEA set of drawers for clothing 10 years ago and it had turned into a massive junk drawer hole. We finally have a space to hang tools and work on bike parts or home repair. The cabinets were saved from a future kitchen remodel demo and properly plastered with all our favorite stickers that previously didn’t have a home.
AFTER - IKEA kitchen drawers repurposed as work bench
My husband is a former electrician and installed receptacles, lighting and an under cabinet kitchen stereo to listen to his collection of 90s cds
AFTER - Work bench details
Helmet storage
The garage door was replaced with a shitty, narrow residential door that had a 3” threshold which jarred our bikes and turning our handlebars in our grasp every time we rolled in or out. We found this 4ish foot, steel commercial door at our local Rebuild-it Center for $100. Kyle sweated out the re-framing for such a heavy door, but did a beautiful job. With friend’s advice, I designed a mid-century waterfall accent to tie the entrance in with the rest of the house.
AFTER - Mid-century style bike garage door
We finally feel welcome home. The daily friction has been greatly reduced and we’re left with bike storage zen.
closing thoughts
If your biking lifestyle is near and dear to you, invest the time in a bike storage solution that eliminates stress and makes you want to ride.
Let us know if you need some brainstorming help!
