Our house sees a great deal of bike in-and-out action. For longevity and theft prevention, we store all of our bikes inside. I currently own two bikes (Marinoni Turismo touring and Surly Cross-Check winter/commuter), and Sarah has three. To preserve our nicer rides, inactive bikes live in the basement (a typical Peterborough century home cave-like space). We’ve been dragging the on-the-go bikes through the house to a back room for storage.
This was a passable strategy for the summer: it’s ok if the front door stays open for 30 seconds while you carry the bike to the back, and your shoes are either easy to slip off, or not terribly dirty.
In winter, of course, this all changes: the bikes are covered in slush and snow, it’s a big hassle to take off snowy boots to carry the bike back, and minimizing open entry doors is a wise energy decision.
In any case, the back room has turned out to be a bad long-term solution: carrying the bikes through the house several times each day for work and errands, sometimes in a rush, leads to nasty pedal strikes gouging doors and walls.
Something had to be done!
We figured there was enough space right by the front door to hang one bike on the wall. With two different hooks in hand, we tried to screw them into the lath and plaster (there’s no stud to be found) with expanding molly bolts.
Twice.
First attempt (the bottom plastery mess) used the two-screw hook, and ripped out of the wall in the middle of the night with bike attached. The second attempt, with four molly bolts strongly installed…well, the top bolt begin to pull out after a day while hanging the bike. Disaster!
After some deeper consideration and with mounting urgency — this is the entrance! — I came up with a new plan. We bought a 6′ poplar board, routered, sanded, stained, and verathaned it. I’d screw the board into the wall, then the hook to the board, making the board a 6′ lever. If this ripped out of the wall, we basically wouldn’t have an entryway left. But I’m presuming that physics will prevent such a catastrophe! This is one of the benefits of lath & plaster over drywall, where there is wood to screw into virtually anywhere in the wall. If you disperse the load well enough, the lath should hold.
I went with poplar not only for the price (it’s a mid-range expensive wood), but because it’s a relatively light hardwood. You wouldn’t want to use pine for this application because it isn’t strong enough to act like a lever, it would just bend. At the other end of the spectrum, oak is super stiff, but very heavy — and I think minimizing the weight that the wall is bearing is a good idea.
Anyway, here’s the result! With a plastic drip tray below, it’s worked perfectly for almost two weeks now, and I’ve been keeping a close eye on it for wear. So far as I can tell, it’s gonna stay stuck.
Now we just need to figure out where the second bike is gonna go…
When I came home last night I had to do a bit of clearing up from that very strange weather yesterday. Ferocious wind, blustery snow, total whiteout, sunny & clear.
