So man cave is coming along well. Converted garage, modern timber frame house so 25mm plasterboard over insulation. I had planned to line one wall with steady rack bike racks. Great things that fold away and swivel. And there lies the problem. I need 5 racks on a 2.5m wall. Easy enough however every stud is just in the wrong place and despite using the heaviest of heavy duty plasterbaord fixings i managed to rip one right out the wall.

So plan was to cover most of the wall with a big sheet of wood attaching it to the studs, paint wood and attach the racks to the wood (it will be 2.3m x 2.5m so pretty heavy etc.

Firstly is mdf the best for this or should i use ply?

Secondly is there a better way of doing this?(apart from ripping out the whole wall and putting noggins in where the racks will be…

Just put battens where the fixings go?

18mm nice ply.

Nb they will all be at slightly differwnt heughts as the bikes are all different lengths/they need bars to overlap top tubes etc. So battens would need several 600 long to catch the studs and would look poor on the outside?

See here

Ply will hold a self tapping screw better than MDF in my experience. OSB will be cheaper but the surface finish won’t be as nice…

Birch Ply would be good for this. A nice clean face and will hold a screw well.

Have had OSB behind plasterboard, it never felt solid. One time I used 18mm chipboard instead of plasterboard on a stud wall and covered in lining paper, matt paint. Was great to be able to hang what I wanted with no raw-plugs, including bike hooks. And dead simple to just fill in any old screw holes.

Someone on here did a reclaimed pallet wood feature wall that look pretty neat?

Depends how heavy the racks and bikes are, so you may wish to consider through bolting the racks to the ply, rather than relying on 18mm of screw thread?

Which in practice, through bolting could be tricky to achieve.

The correct way to do it however does mean taking the longer path.

The racks have 6 holes for screws so should be ok i think. They will also tap into the plasterboard at the back so should be ok. Found a company online who cut birch ply to size and deliver. Result and nice straight edges… cheers guys.

Remove plasterboard, replace with 18mm ply, use plasterboard type expansion bolt through the top hole at least with self tappers through lower holes or expansion fixings through all the holes if you’ve room between them

So room is finished. Much stw help including kitchen and rack recomendations.

So racks

Tv and ps4

Looks awesome!

Looks ace, just out of interest did you keep the garage door? Only as I’m doing something so,liar but want to keep the big garage door if poss but it’s hardly going to be thermally efficient!

Looks great but thats a lot of white for a place with bikes!!

Thanks for the positive comments. Garage door was replaced by french doors.(now with blinds but its dark etc just now…). I now have a strict wash bike every time policy….

Sorry for digging this up, but this looks almost exactly like what I want to do to get most of the bikes out of the garage and on a wall so we can walk in there again.

What thickness of ply did you use in the end? And did the screws go through it and into the wall?
My problem is I have a pretty solid wall, but don’t want to screw the racks directly into the wall as I think we’ll need to move them around over time – want to get as many bikes as I can (8 or so road, track & MTB) into a space 3m wide.

I was thinking about building some rails out of something like angle section or something and bolting steadyracks to that. But I’m not sure if there’s anything ideal for that, so maybe just putting a board up and moving them around on that would be best. But if I’m doing that i don’t want to screw through the board and into the wall – it’s pretty solid and I don’t want to have to drill into it every time.

An alternative might be to use threaded inserts going into say 18mm ply, then just bolt the racks into them.

Careful on how coarse the threads on the inserts are though and the size of the hole, else the ply may delaminate.

I’d epoxy them in for belt ‘n’ braces.

To be honest though, decent 18mm ply and several good screw fixings on a rack should hold most bikes fine.
Inserts may be a bit overkill.

To be honest though, decent 18mm ply and several good screw fixings on a rack should hold most bikes fine.

Even if the screw is just in the ply (<18mm) and not going through it into the wall?

Yeah I should think so.
I share a garage with something like 8 mountain bikes all hanging on hooks screwed into 18mm ply (2 screws). The ply is screwed into the wall proper via a few fixings.

They hold up fine.
Introducing movement may add more stress but if the brackets you’re using have several fixing points and you use good screws, say 4/5mm ones at maximum depth after passing through the bracket I should think you’ll be fine.
I can’t see fixings on the brackets pictured up the page but they’re a nice wide unit and so probably use several fixing points.

Threaded inserts would probably last better I suppose but screws should be good.

Ebikes or road bikes? Makes quite a difference! 🙂

Awesome, thanks. I’ll find out what width screws you can fit through a steadyrack.

No e-bikes. Mostly road & track. Heaviest will be a couple of T-130s, one L one S.