For the first 15 years or so of having a house with a garage, I never had room in the garage for cars at all - and that was a two car garage. Bicycles, lawn mowers/tractors, radial arm saws and just plain old junk invariably took up all the room. So, when we moved into our new house I was determined to actually have room for cars in the garage. I put up lots of wall storage for ladders, put the five bicycles up on another wall and luckily it is a three car garage so one side can be dedicated to all the lawn weapons of mass destruction.
That worked fine until kayaking came along - kayaks are huuuge. I've been keeping them outside but with the new, expensive toy coming soon, I knew I wanted to store them inside and it looked like above the garage doors was the only solution. I played around with designs just using off-the-shelf ropes and pulleys, but the thought of kayaks falling out of the ceiling onto the cars or our heads wasn't very appealing. Then I saw the Harken Hoister systems and for $79 realized it was the way to go - not much more than buying the parts and it includes a racheting block and tackle rig that makes it a lot safer.
As usual, it took me about four times as long as I thought it would take to do the installation - mostly due to lining up a 2 x 6 over drywall-covered ceiling joists, but it works great. I can even drive the truck into the garage with the boat on the cradles and hoist it from there. Now, if the hoist could only include a built-in kayak wash and dry system...
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