Garage Attic Elevator / Lift Build in Minneapolis Minnesota

hi my name is Brian my son Mitch's behind the camera and this is our karate Melvin [Music] this is our problem it's a problem that a lot of us have the staircase between the joists and the garage is so narrow even climbing up it is a pain in the ass but bringing stuff up there of any size of all is really difficult so my wife and I were empty nesters now we go from a pretty good-sized house in Indiana we moved it to this one level come home in Minnesota and we look but like most of us we have so much stuff that we need to store just the seasonal things Christmas Halloween the different different holidays we need to get access to it climbing up and down those stairs is not gonna cut it for us and bringing it up and down my stairs it's dangerous too so that's why we created this that's what I needed to create this I'm gonna show you how we created it so the first thing we had to do was get rails and attach them some people who do this use the garage door rails which is fine I just thought this looked cleaner and so I'm going with these these are superstrut one 5/8 inch channel very sturdy really really sturdy and I have studs you know I'm screwing into the studs behind the drywall with these three and a half inch screws they don't these are these don't have a lot of weight pulling on top of them or out on them it just has to guide the carriage going up but we did have I did have to consider what happens up on top there the joist up there sticks out a little bit so I had to put in this furring strip behind it it worked perfectly it was the exact right width or depth I should say thickness I should say to make it line up perfectly with that joists on top you can see inside there the trolley wheels there's a two on each side they work really great they're inch and 5/8 oh and I'll leave a description and and a link you can get them a number of places but I'll leave a link but there's two on each side attached to these uprights of the carriage on each side there's a hole in the center of them so you can attach them with the bolts they work really well they're nice and smooth and that's what to use okay so this is a carriage there's a lot of ways to design these carriages I've seen people well them together with steel channel would be perfectly biking well and I need all the equipment but this is something you can do you know yourself the average guy with what they have in their garage so what I've got is there's only importance that it's strong it is pretty sturdy I'm pretty happy with it but I got a big old hook here Isle it I should say I've got a 2x6 up here that then transfers to these supports on the carriage that go down I got three big ol bolts here I had to have them this way I didn't feel any need to hack side them off at this point because I really don't get in the way I think how did you put it this way because a little because of the wall clearance back here then I got a 2x4 coming down it attaches to the base and this is built just like up there like a like a stud frame it's 2x4 it's got the crease supports in the middle so it's very sturdy and then obviously to uh with concerned about the twisting action here we attach these pretty significant flat rods or flat steel from the top of the carriage down to the corner it doesn't get in the way when you're loading it up and unloading a matter of fact keeps things tucked in so it doesn't nothing hangs over the edge and gets caught oh it's going up there so it works out really well so I was really concerned about keeping the carriage sturdy and it is it's really sturdy the way it's built right now but what I did is I've got it bolted just like at the top I got it bolted on the bottom and I've had it a couple more two by fours I would attach one at a time with just a whole bunch of you know two and a half and three and a half inch screws like decking screws right and when I put it all together and with these struts this thing is really sturdy it does not [Music] all right let's start here with the purchase of this motor it's an industrial-strength motor it's a 550 pound capacity it'll do 1102 with a snatch block but you can see is it's certainly 550 pounds is more than enough to pull whatever I'm going to be pulling up and down this on this elevator but it will do a level hunter with a snatch block in it but don't ever do that so this is a really high quality motor the first concern I would say is how I'm going to attach this motor where it's not going to come off obviously so what I did is almost every one of these motors comes with these hoops up here and this is no different it comes with that saw that ultimately decided to do is use this leftover superstructure to secure the motor to the channel and then secure the channel to this beam which I'm going to talk about in a second but I use pretty significant size bolts that go through the channel there's actually six of them for pretty close to the motor than two on the ends that hold the channel up and it's a really durable channel but I wouldn't trust it on its own but with these bolts on there it's more than enough to hold this motor in position and do the job up here I was really concerned about getting this motor secured to something that is going to be sturdy so I built this frame or we keep saying high but I mean we built this frame and I'll show you how I built it in a second but we had to get it into them into some 2x4 studs coming down and there's drywall here again so we pulled the drywall off and then we doubled up on the studs and then what we decided to do is we decided to go ahead and layer these two by fours and then glue them together as we went so each one we put one on screw it in glue it put the next one I'll screw it in and put a lot of screws in there this thing is really sturdy you see we've recently have we've created a pretty solid beam right here it's good to be post I'm not a carpenter so I don't know how the Turner's so I get them jumbled up sometimes but time and then we created a pretty solid beam going across the top you can see it's a little off-center but it doesn't really matter as long as the hoist is centered over the carriage that's all that really matters we had to have an off center like this because this is the next stud going up so that's how the frame works I think you'll see it's pretty rugged notice that there's no movement okay so this is part of the problem that we are trying to resolve this is pretty common in so many homes but it's so narrow going up and down trying to bring things up and down it's really difficult climbing it is one thing but trying to get things through that hole are really difficult so anyway we left this here because we don't really plan on using this per se as a person lifts but we probably blow more than we do we intend to but I wanted to make sure that we could leave that capability and also not create a hazard where we would fall through if we tripped or something or fell on it or whatever so I just installed this little door on top to give it a nice you can make some fun so as I said earlier my wife and I are empty-nesters now my my kids are all going on and we moved from a pretty good-sized home in lot in Indiana here to Minnesota to a a14 town home but it did have this nice storage room up here so this elevator was built to bring everything up in network we have everything that was in the house that we just needed to store like Christmas and Halloween and kids old things and stuff like it's just a lot of stuff and this is winter so we have the chairs from outside we have those stored up here we just have everything stored up here so it's working out really really well I couldn't be happier with it everything came up including my dad's old toolbox I didn't want to hold on to so I get the hold on to it up here

Channel: The Elevator

Views: 974,956

Rating: 4.9190969 out of 5

Keywords: Attic Lift, Attic Elevator, Garage Attic Lift, Garage Attic Elevator, Storage Lift, Storage Elevator, Garage Storage, Garage Lift, Garage Elevator

Id: CgdsamzPN8w

Length: 8min 45sec (525 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 05 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/julchak]

Very cool, looking forward to when I own my own home and can put useful devices around like this.

I'm sure your dad has mentioned it, but be sure to watch out for those pinch points on your ride up haha

[u/itis2amhere]

That is awesome, thanks for sharing!

[u/mitch_michaels17]

We also made this fun little video you all may get a kick out of: https://youtu.be/fHUPUuNkezI

[u/deletetemptemp]

Could you sell the house with this?