When I moved into my house a decade ago, I needed to do something about my surfboards. In my apartment, they were always crammed in a corner—an inefficient storage method—and my daughter wasn’t crawling yet. But in the house, with a newly mobile baby, the standing boards would be a bit of a hazard. I needed to solve this problem.

While many companies have premade surfboard racks, none of what was available worked for my needs. My father-in-law, a former shop teacher, took one long 2 x 4, cut out angled notches, and then using dowels and foot-long 2 x 4s, fashioned five arms extending off of the main plank. He made identical racks that we fastened to the garage wall. The pairs of arms worked in conjunction to elevate the boards so that they were out of harm’s way, out of sight, and stored so that the garage actually remained usable.

When we’d first installed it, I had just the exact number of boards to fill the rack. But over time, as it always seems to go for athletes and hobbyists, the gear accumulated. Once the pandemic hit, outdoor sporting equipment was hard to come by—and when the outdoors became our sanctuary, I started buying foam boards to teach my kids, and potato-shaped boards because they were fun, and longboards because I live in a place where the surf often demands it. In the end, I had more than doubled my surfboard collection. While I no longer had crawling babies to worry about and the garage had become too busy with other things to ever park a car, I still wanted to come up with a system to elevate the boards. Once more, the overflow of boards stood wobbly in the corner. But with all the available wall space in the garage occupied with hanging bikes and ladders and camping gear, I needed a new design to stow more than half a dozen boards standing up in the corner.

When a lightbulb went out (in the garage), a lightbulb went on (in my head), and I realized I had all this available space above the garage door tracks. While one beam was already running across the width of the garage to keep the garage door tracks and opener in place, adding another beam and metal joist hangers was only part of the solution. To line up the already-installed beam running across my garage, the second beam would have to rest essentially just above the garage tracks.

While changing the bulb, I dropped something off of the ladder. Just then, like that apocryphal Newton-apple story, another bright idea came to mind: gravity. Over time, the wood beam I planned to install would bend with gravity and the weight of the boards. I didn’t want to add any pressure to the garage door tracks, potentially throwing the whole system out of whack. When I consulted with my father-in-law, we sketched out a plan that included a chain system that would be fastened into the ceiling and attached to the new beam, preventing any sag. It’s certainly an additional step to install the chain. But if adding it to this dream project will help preserve the overhead space, avoid complications with the garage door down the road, and get those surfboards off the floor, again, it’s worth that extra measure.

Top image by kolderal/Getty Images

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