There's really nothing like a good, over-engineered shelf. For our basement storage room I constructed two, six foot high, 7 by 2 foot units where we could store practically anything. I needed to do this so I could clear out the rest of the basement for it's continued finishing.
I found these nice kits at Home Depot that include all the brackets and screws needed to build the shelves. All you have to do is provide the lumber. I chose normal 2x4 studs, and half inch MDF for the surfaces. MDF makes for a nice smooth shelf, which makes it easier to slide large boxes on and off of.
The picture to the left demonstrates one of the brackets.
Each bracket in this kit required 20 screws. There were 16 brackets per unit. I built 2 units. That's a total of 640 screws! It wasn't so bad though. The screws were "self drilling" and had a washer built into the screw head. Still 640 screws is 640 screws. It took some time. After positioning the MDF I tacked them down with my finishing nail gun.
The picture to the right shows one of the finished shelf units. They were extremely heavy. Once in place though, they should never need to be moved again.
The picture to the left shows the new storage room with both of the new monster shelves in place. I kept the old plastic shelves I had to fill in the back wall. Hopefully this will give us enough storage space for some time.
