We decided to take advantage of the end of summer sales on bodyboards for our kids and picked up a few body boards for them. There are a few care tips that came with them to ensure they last a long time. They included:

• Store them flat
• Don’t stack them on top of each other
• Allow airflow to make sure they dry fully
• Rinse with fresh water after every use
• Don’t leave them in the sun

Seeing as how leaving the boards sitting on the floor seemed like a bad idea I had to figure out a way to safely store the boards out of the way in our rather full garage. The most logical place for this was on the ceiling.

There are a few sites that show different options for bodyboard or surf board storage, so I tried to combine a few popular options to come up with our set-up.

To start with I got together the needed materials …

• 2 x 4 timber
• 2 x 2.4m shower curtain rods
• 6 x 1m plumbing pipe insulation
• 3″ (76mm) Timber screws

I started by cutting the curtain rods into 6 x 70cm long bars and cutting down the insulation to about 68cm. Slide the pipe insulation over the cut shower curtain rods.

To comfortably fit three body boards in the rack I decided to hang the lowest board 60cm below the ceiling. This allowed enough room for clear airflow around the boards, and for their to be no pressure on any of the body boards.

I created four hanging frames that I would insert the padded rods in. Since I was putting six rods in I drilled about half way through the 2 x 4 timber frames so that they rods could rotate when the boards were up on the padded rods. The rods I used were 19mm in diameter, so I drilled the holes at 20mm.

To support the weight of the boards you want to make sure that the frames are screwed into the ceiling joists. Screwing them into the ceiling panels will not be strong enough, so I would recommend using a stud finder to make sure to put the frames into the joists.

Check the length of the boards to make sure that the distance between your frames is close enough that your boards all fit, and I would suggest as far apart as you safely can so that you provide maximum support for the boards.

Hopefully you find this tutorial helpful …