Garage shelf help

In my quest to make better use of the limited space I have and organize everything, I've decided to build a shelf on top of my overhead cabinets at the front of the garage. The cabinets have overhead doors that only stay open in the "over the top" position. The problem is, I've been using the top of the cabinets for storage so I have to hold the heavy steel doors open with one hand while rummaging around for heavy things with the other. No more!

I've decided to create two 8' x 16" deep shelves over the cabinets. I want to mount them as close as possible (1" or less) from the cabinet top so they're still within reach without a ladder. The problem is, that leaves little to no space to use a traditional mounting bracket. Looking for recommendations for some sort of inverted bracket or the like that will get my shelf as close as possible to the top of the cabinet without hindering the ability to fully open each door. One thing I thought of would be to drill and attach L-brackets to the sides of each cabinet and use those to support the shelf but I'd rather attach directly to the studs instead of drilling all those holes in the steel cabinets.

Ideas?

Looks like you have enough room to do diagonal undershelf braces between your cabinets. A 3/4 inch think melamine should be plenty strong to span over the cabinets.

Something like this?

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B017LJSDVU/ref=mp_s_a_1_15?ie=UTF8&qid=1519490015&sr=8-15&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_FMwebp_QL65&keywords=shelf+brackets

Hrm, good idea. I don't know why I didn't think to put brackets between the cabinets. As long as the brackets can span the 2x4s the cabinets are mounted to and give me the clearance I need that could totally work. Thanks!

Instead of putting regular shelf brackets in the spaces between the cabinets and just relying on those, you could also attach a ledger board along the studs so the back of the shelves are supported continuously, then its only the front edge dealing with the span.

If you don't want to have the brackets between the cabinets, then attach 2x4s between the shelves and the ceiling joists along the front edge of the shelves in the spaces between the cabinets.

What about suspending the shelves from the ceiling with metal strapping like overhead garage door openers?  You could secure the back to the wall with a much smaller piece of angle as it's just there to keep the shelf from swaying on the straps..

Thanks for the ideas guys! I found some heavy duty brackets at Lowes that should fit between cabinets on the existing 2x4s that are rated for 1000lbs per pair. I'm going to use three per 8' span. As there's no room to get the drill to secure them between cabinets, I'm going to try a 12" drill extension first and if that doesn't work, I'll remove the center cabinet to make room. The ledger board and ceiling suspension also good ideas that I hadn't thought of. We'll see how things go when the parts arrive.

Do you have access to the space above the ceiling there?  In my garage I did a ceiling suspended shelf in similar fashion.  I just draped 2x4's across the top of the truss spans, and then suspended threaded rod with fender washers hanging down through the ceiling and tied that into the shelf framing on the bottom side for the front edge of the shelves, and anchored the "wall side" of the shelf into the studs of the wall.     

Not my picture, but basically like this up top: 

...and a variation of this on the bottom:

You can even get fancy and run multiple layers if you have a place with more wall space to extend downwards too: 

Pictures stolen from a how to blog here:  http://contractorkurt.com/2012/02/18/overhead-garage-mightyshelves/

In reply to xflowgolf :

I was going to suggest this idea too, you beat me to it ;-)

My plan was to do the same thing in my garage.

paranoid_android said:

In reply to xflowgolf :

I was going to suggest this idea too, you beat me to it ;-)

My plan was to do the same thing in my garage.

Me too, this is exactly what I did in my garage and it worked out great 

xflowgolf said:

You can even get fancy and run multiple layers if you have a place with more wall space to extend downwards too: 

  

Pictures stolen from a how to blog here:  http://contractorkurt.com/2012/02/18/overhead-garage-mightyshelves/

I would be accidentally breaking that light bulb all. the. time.

I like the threaded rod idea!  Very elegant solution...

In my garage, I used the heavy duty brackets from HD:

xflowgolf said:

Do you have access to the space above the ceiling there?  In my garage I did a ceiling suspended shelf in similar fashion.  I just draped 2x4's across the top of the truss spans, and then suspended threaded rod with fender washers hanging down through the ceiling and tied that into the shelf framing on the bottom side for the front edge of the shelves, and anchored the "wall side" of the shelf into the studs of the wall.     

Not my picture, but basically like this up top: 

...and a variation of this on the bottom:

You can even get fancy and run multiple layers if you have a place with more wall space to extend downwards too: 

  

Pictures stolen from a how to blog here:  http://contractorkurt.com/2012/02/18/overhead-garage-mightyshelves/

Hmmm. I have to keep this in mind for future space utilization in my garage. I use every bit I can!

It will depend on what you plan to store up there and how heavy it is, but perhaps hidden shelf brackets may work.  Especially for light items like paper towels.

Thanks for the all the suggestions guys. With the help of the 12" drill extension I was able to easily mount the brackets between the cabinets and also secure the shelf to the brackets without removing anything. Now I can slide open the doors and they won't slam closed on me anymore!

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00008KISM/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1