The festive season may be well and truly over for another year but in some ways its legacy still remains. As well as the extra inches you may have gained around your waistline during the celebrations, you are also likely to have amassed a number of new possessions.
After all, December 25th has become a gift giving frenzy and you might have received anything from books and CDs to new televisions, exercise machines and kitchen equipment.
Whatever you got, you will need somewhere appropriate to house it. After all, having items strewn around your home is not desirable and can look messy.
As well as being an eyesore when guests arrive, this is also bound to diminish your enjoyment of your property because you are likely to feel a sense of stress. Indeed, you might begin to struggle when finding your possessions if they are not placed in an ordered fashion.
If you are in this position, you should consider investing in additional storage. Whether you go for racking or any other form of storage, this could make your life considerably easier.
And when you choose your racking or whatever else you want, such as storage trunks, you should perhaps get items that are big enough to keep future gifts in too.
This means that when the next festive season arrives, or indeed when you are handed items for your birthday, you are more likely to have somewhere to place them.
These days there are a whole range of storage racking solutions available to help you keep your home tidy and your belongings ordered.
However big your business is, there is always a need for storage. Whether it’s row upon row of racking for the warehouse, a shelf for the office or a locker for valuables, extra storage is invaluable in the workplace. Despite that, it is often not the first thing that springs to mind when opening a new store, and ill-thought decisions will leave businesses with the wrong type or not having enough storage for their needs.
Whether it’s stock or paperwork that needs organising, the right shelving and storage can help any business run smoothly. Stock needs to be easily accessible and storing it off the floor will lessen the chance of things getting damaged, protecting those valuable profits. Many companies choose metal racking as it tends to be more durable and is able to withstand heavier weights. Make sure the person who puts it together knows what they’re doing though as unless they are assembled correctly, you may well be loosing more than just profits if staff become injured.
Storing paperwork correctly is also very important, and shelving can be a great place to begin. Whether you want to file it alphabetically, or just want a simple storage solution for items that will be sorted later, keeping it all in the same place can save lots of time and stress when it comes to finding that receipt from three years ago.
So whatever your business sells, investing in the correct storage for your needs will help make it a great success, and nobody can afford to turn that down.
Selecting the correct shelving for your needs may not appear to be a difficult task but there are many considerations that may either make you very happy with your purchase or leave you thinking you could have selected a better option. Most shelving or racking purchases will fulfil your immediate needs if you have carefully thought about them and planned accordingly. The aspect that may potentially get overlooked is that of future proofing your purchase.
Whether racking is being purchased for an industrial purpose or decorative shelving is being purchased for the home or office environment, some thought about how that environment is likely to evolve may have a large influence on your purchase. Typically, modular racking systems will provide the capacity to extend and increase your available racking over time as your storage needs increase. It is logical to buy a shelving system that can be expanded both upwards and in terms of strength to handle the heavier and fuller pallets that you now need to store.
The aesthetically designed shelf may not need to be expanded in its own right but it may need to be replicated in other rooms at a later date and to do so needs to be a style that will be readily available in the future. Racking solutions with standardised fittings ensure that you have much more opportunity to modify the utilisation of a racking system as layouts and purposes of workspaces change. New innovative storage ideas are also far more likely to be compatible with standard fittings such as slat wall.
Retail shelving and displays come in various shapes and sizes, and there are usually some units to fit everyone’s requirements. Cheap shelving is often the practical way for a small shopkeeper to display his products and goods, without having to worry too much about the effect on his profit margins. At the same time, he or she must take into consideration whether the cut price shelving will still effectively sell his or her goods.
There are wire shelving systems available, which make good display systems. These can be used, for example, in exhibition centres where first impressions on a potential client or customer is all important. A display that looks cheap will give the customer the wrong idea, and can be very off-putting. The last thing a company needs at an exhibition of their goods or services, is to have a display which gives them a bad image. Therefore, the careful selection of display systems, to complement the kind of service being offered, is essential.
If you wish to give your shop a more natural feel, you should opt for shelving systems constructed out of wood. There are many different styles of wood shelving, and they will certainly appeal to customers, especially if you use them for window displays and encourage them to pop in and have a look around at the same time.
Shelving systems made from glass are an elegant way to display goods. Whether free standing or affixed to the wall, they will add a touch of style.
Take care of your tools and they will take care of you. This might sound a bit old fashioned but sometimes the old fashioned ideas are the best ones. If you did woodwork or metalwork at school, this notion will have been repeated over and again by your class teacher.
In these days of mass-production of just about everything, cheap tools are all around us. Take for example wood-saws, formerly with a wooden handle and blade made of steel that needed regular sharpening. Nowadays, blades are made from alloys that last much longer and with mass-produced and therefore cheaper to produce, handles which are usually made from plastic, are low in price and for all intents and purposes, disposable.
Not matter what their cost, not looking after your tools properly is potentially dangerous and could cause damage to a project that will mean needing to replace the piece of wood or starting again. Whether it is a project involving the building of shelving units, shelf racks or storage racking. Poorly cared for tools can cause accidents. For instance, a blunt chisel will need more effort to make it cut and this extra effort might cause it to slip. A blunt drill bit may snap if too much pressure is applied.
An oilstone to keep your chisel blades sharp is an investment worth considering. If their blades have become wet, dry them thoroughly first, leave them somewhere warm first to make sure they dry properly then spray them with oil afterwards.
With a stair landing that is reasonably easy to modify you might consider creating extra storage space. Assuming there is an unused “dead space” you have the opportunity to install a stair trap which will allow you to create an area roughly three by four feet deep into which shelf racks could be installed. If the shelf racks are self-assembly they can be adjusted to suit your needs.
To begin, remove the floor and sub-floor from the landing. Be careful about pipes or electrical wiring possibly running alongside the floor joists. Remove the top two treads and stair risers.
Nail the ledgers to the floor joists on either side of the opening, allowing room for the thickness of the door framing. Cut the subfloor plywood to size and fasten the side frame pieces to the lower edges of the panel. Attach the frame pieces to the panel at each end.
Cut the stringer pieces to size, attach them to the lower front edge of the subfloor panel. Fasten the remaining frame member across the bottom of the subfloor at the point where the stringers end. Cut risers and treads to size, cut the grip and attach it to the face of the front riser. Install the finish flooring in place atop the subfloor.
Place the assembled unit in position. Fasten strap hinges to wall and flooring.
Open the door; fasten the angle bracket to the door frame. Attach the gas struts and establish where to attach the remaining set of support brackets. Finish the floor material to match the existing floor.
A poster rack is ideally suited to the artist’s needs, but even if you are not an artist, it is easy to see how many different items can be stored here. It will hold pictures, picture frames and anything that cannot be stored easily anywhere else. Straight grained softwood such as pine would be the best material to use for this open ended storage rack. However a sturdy piece of plywood would be perfectly serviceable as the rack’s bottom.
Two legs at either end of the storage rack are secured to a leg base, with both legs slanting inwards and joined to a leg brace, which will support the bottom of the rack. Mark out with pencil the middle of both leg bases. Two uprights at either end are screwed to the mid-point of the leg base slanting upwards crossing the point where the legs meet the leg-braces and fixed to the upright brace.
When both the uprights have been joined to the leg assemblies, the bottom of the rack can be laid and fastened into position. Five slats, three quarter by one and three quarter inch thickness should now be laid across the uprights and fixed into place with flathead screws. One slat should be fastened at the top of each upright, one where the bottom of the rack has been fixed. The remaining three slats at either side will now be secured at equal distances on the structure.
Sand the wood and apply undercoat sealer. Then paint it in a colour to match its surroundings.