DIY Personalized Coat Rack and Shelf

Hi everyone!! Yes I know, it’s been a while. Unfortunately between school and taking care of an infant, I’ve not had much time to work on any projects.  School has been pretty intense and Kennedy now being ten months is becoming quite the handful!!  She’s cruising around and just about getting into everything…the little monster lol.

Anyhoo…as it’s now getting colder and we’ve started wearing coats and jackets, I realized we have nowhere to hang them. The the coat closet that we had off of the kitchen was converted into a pantry…needed the extra storage space 🙂 So the solution for our coats and jacket was to install a coat rack.  Usually I would buy one but now I can build things. So of course I decided this weekend that was exactly what I was going to do. And boy do I love how it came out!! I didn’t set out to get these hooks, I was just looking for decorative hooks and voila!! Found these at Joann’s.  Finding these  alphabet hooks at Joann’s just made it perfect.  The best part is that I got them for such a steal. Each one was originally $9.99 but I got them each for $2.99.  You really can’t beat such a deal. The shelf brackets and knobs were gotten from Amazon. I spent about $20 on those.  The wood and the rest of the supplies I already had at home. It’s amazing how much scrap wood I have accumulated over the last few months.

These awesome  metal alphabet hooks.

This turned out to be a pretty easy project. It can be done within a day or two. Oh and I also got to use my new circular saw too!! That was pretty exciting. I actually posted a video of trying it out for the first time here. So let’s get to it.

What you will need:

• 1 1″x 8″ x 8′ wood board
• 1 1″ x 6″ x 4″ wood board
• Hanging hooks
• Drawer/cabinet decorative knobs
• Decorative shelf brackets
• Wood stain of your choice
• Wood glue
• Wood screws
• Sand paper 110 and 220 grit

Supplies for the project…notice my nifty little saw there 🙂

The first thing I did was cut the wood boards to the size I wanted.  The size you go with will depend on you and the length of your wall. I cut the 1 x 8 down to 51 inches and I cut the 1 x 6 to 36 inches. After cutting I lightly sanded them down and then stained them. For staining I used a mixture of Minwax Dark Walnut and Jacobean.

Sanding my wood pieces 

 

 

Pretreating the wood pieces with wood conditioner before staining

After staining I let the wood dry over night. Once the wood was dry I was ready to assemble and build the coat rack. The first thing I did was mark out where I wanted me letters.  I wanted them easily spaced leaving 1.5 inches from both ends. So the letters were all 9.5 inches apart.

Marking out the spots for the letters and knobs

After marking my where my letters would be I lay them down to see how it looked.

Test run

Once I was satisfied with the look, I glued the 1 x 6 board using wood glue to the 1 x 8 board. This becomes the shelf.

Forgot to take a picture of gluing it.  I glued the board about half an inch from the top of the 1 x 8 

Once the glue dried I attached the decorative brackets.

So the screws that came with the brackets and the hooks were too long to use as they would have gone right through the wood. I had some 1/2 inch wood screws at home so I used those instead. I didn’t like that they were silver as you can see in the picture above so I decided to improvise.  Spray paint to the rescue.  I used my favorite spray paint, Rustoleum oil rubbed bronze and painted the heads of replacement screws.

Once the spray paint dried on the screws I proceeded to screw the brackets in and then my letters.  Make sure you pre drill your holes in the board before driving the screw into the wood. If you don’t pre drill, the screw could split the wood.

For the knobs, I pre drilled the holes straight through the board as the knob screws had to be screwed in through the back into the board and then the knob screwed in at the front.

And once the knobs are screwed in, that’s it!! Coat rack done!! I really love the way it turned out.  I feel like this is something you can find at stores for at ridiculous prices and it cost me all of about $45  to make.  I’m quite pleased with myself.  I think this might be one of my favorite projects yet.

The finished product before it was mounted on the wall

Note that the screws that I used to screw into the wall are a goldfish color.  I went back with a little bit of spray paint and a paint brush and painted the heads black 

So let me know what y’all think.  Please comment, like, share and pin. Love hearing your feedback. Have a great rest of the weekend!!