Life has been adjusting — adjusting to how COVID-19 flipped everything upside down, adjusting to life with a new baby, adjusting to…all kinds of things! The main thing is that we’re healthy, happy, and safe so I do feel very lucky overall but there are days when all the restrictions and anxiety can definitely make us think we’re going insane.

One place that I can keep things pretty much on lock though is the garage. Even just a few minutes in there to wind down really clears my head. I’ve been wanting to do some smaller ‘non-critical’ projects to put the new table saw to use and was seeing all kinds of people on YouTube making videos on shop organization and these French Cleat walls so I decided to make one. Vertical storage in the shop is always a smart way to store stuff since it’s so often wasted space.

A french cleat is just a fancy name for a clever way to mount things using wall brackets with matching 45 degree angles. If anyone knows why it’s called a french cleat…let me know!

Overall it’s not too complicated — I decided there was a ton of empty space right behind the miter saw so I first hung a sheet of plywood there and then ripped the long wall brackets to size. After they’re the right length you set the table-saw to 45 degrees and adjust the cut so that it rips the wood perfectly in half giving matching pieces for the wall-brackets and the mounting brackets that go on the back of the tool-holders, pipe-clamp holders, etc that you decide to make and hang.

I was happy with the way this turned out. If I were to do it all over again, the only thing I would do differently is mounting the wall-brackets. In this approach I put them on after throwing the plywood up on the wall. It’s a lot easier to get the separations between brackets correct with the plywood on the ground and to have the glue-up be a little tidier.