Anyone know of a garage lift for storage that isn't for cars?

[spacy9]

OK, this may sound weird, but let me explain. We have a 3 car garage with the first 2 bays filled up with my G35 and my wife's MDX. The 3rd car bay is full of stuff like bikes, outdoor furniture, and a couple of boxes.

Well, I bought my wife a convertible for Christmas (she doesn't know it yet) and I'm trying to figure out a way to get it in the garage. So I started to look at building some type of platform to go above the car (It's only 48" high, the car that is) and put everything on this platform above the car. Then I started to think how much of a pain in the butt it's going to be to get the bikes and such down from there.

So I started to look at 4 post electric lifts. However all of them seem to be overkill, expecting a car on top, and holding 7000lbs. I just want one to hold a some lawn furniture, bikes, boxes, and a lawn mower - 1000lbs at most and that's pushing it.

So after this long post, does anyone know of a lift system for the garage that isn't made for a car to be on the top, just for a car to be parked below and all your crap to be on the top?

Thanks!

[smockers83]

The only problem you may run into in looking for a 1000 lb lift is that the liftable surface will be quite small, like 4'x8'. Either measure out 4x8 on the floor or get a piece of plywood and see how much of it you can fit on it.

If you have rafters in your garage, put the stuff up there. If you don't have rafters, what about shelves? The bikes, you can get bike hooks and hang them on the wall. I have a 3 car garage and we have tons of crap in it. The bikes are up on hooks on the wall, shelves, and stuff up in the rafters, along with stuff on the floor such as a snow blower and lawn mower, a work bench, and a dog kennel.

[C-Kwik]

Costco.com has a small lift system you can get. They are only rated to about 200lbs each, but it costs only a little over $200 for the package. The lift platform itself is only like $75, but you have to get the electric bike lift that they sell (about $135) and it replaces the bike specific hardware. Personally though, since I live in earthquake country, I don' t think I'd be willing to put stuff on a platform that hangs by cables.

[Sentientbydesign]

I'm not sure how much you tinker with your cars, but a vehicle lift might actually be a really nice addition in the long run. I was told that you can find used lifts for around $1200

[SVTCOBRA]

My neighbor has a portable auto lift, but not sure it will lift high enough to get a car under it. Looks like a forklift...sort of. Think he got it for around $600 used.

[spacy9]

Well, thought I would give an update.

I ended up putting up 5 new shelves, used 2 full 4X8 3/4 in pieces of plywood for 4 of the shelves. Then I got 1 premade shelve:

Hyloft 45" x 45" Overhead Storage System

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obi...lance

And the most helpful thing a Garage Gorilla 125 to lift up the 4 bikes over the cars

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obi...lance

The only thing with the Grage Gorilla is that it says it will hang 4 bikes but only comes with the cables for 2 bikes. I had to do some digging at Home Depot and build 2 of my own cables to hang the other 2 bikes.

But in the end I felt useful , spent only $300, and I have blank shelf space so I can store even more crap now

Thanks for all of the ideas!