Whilst fixing up the back door area of our house I decided we needed a proper coat rack, the one we had been using was a roughly sawn, and more roughly painted block of wood with a few badly spaced hooks screwed to it, with the newly plastered and painted wall this just wouldn't do. I had a look around online to purchase one, but the ones we liked were £60+, now that is good value, but was still £50 more than I could justify paying. So I had a think and a rummage in the garage and found a few choice pieces of wood that I kept tripping over and needed using up so thought it best to make one myself.
The pieces of wood in the garage were perfect for the back board for the hooks and the uprights, but I needed something a bit meatier for the top shelf, this is where by best mate and builder friend came in handy, he had a spare scaffolding plank that was a bit past its best for use on site so let me have it, thanks Dom!
Some planks of wood, one long, two short, one thick.
Bit rotten, ready to be lopped off and turned into smoke and heat.
Hmm, it's seen some action... which will give it some character, this will be the top of the shelf, so unless you are Shaq you wont see it.
The scaffold plank cleaned up quite well, I chopped off the rotten end and sanded it down with the electric sander so it was smooth enough to stain. I then set about creating the upright parts and back board. Plenty of sawing, sanding, swearing, glueing and screwing and I've managed to build myself something almost as good as the ones for sale online, sure its not perfect, but that would never be the case using hand tools on a wobbly Black and Decker Workmate, and I'm sure whatever I bought would have some suboptimal bits and that would nag me more.
Tickled it with the circular saw then went at it for about an hour with the electric sander taking off any splintered bits and sanding out some of the dents and cuts to less severe 'features'.
The upstands, not pretty, plank sawn into three equal lengths, one piece split down the middle and a bit added to the other two pieces so it would widen the wood for better erm, depth.
Choppy chop, making the upstands a prettier shape, attcked this with an electric jigsaw, a tool I don't think I'll ever master, it doesn't matter how slow, how delicate, how careful I am I can never make it go in the exact direction I want it to! much sanding was required to make them look half decent.
I cut up the longest board to use as the back board and then assembled it. doesn't look too bad eh?
I had some stain in the garage, so gave the top a couple coats of it, the wood has a nice 'patina' about it.
I built it up, then painted and stained the relevant parts and then put it all together. I ordered some hooks from ebay, they're antique style, annoyingly they came with posidrive screws rather than slotted ones, but hey -ho. Once I knew where the hooks would be placed I drilled four holes where the hooks fix to the back plate to use to fix the rack to the wall, so once the hooks are on you can't see the fixings. I also used two 90 degree metal brackets on the top of the shelf out of sight into the wall for extra peace of mind security, I'm sure when the kids are old enough to reach it they'll be hanging off of it!
Holes drilled for fixing to the wall.
Top fitted now ready for the fun of fitting it to the wall... damn why did I make it so heavy!
And done! Looks quite respectible I think.
I'm quite pleased with it, could have done a better job if I'd had a band saw and an electric thickness planer, and maybe a table saw to get all the cuts etc perfectly square, but you'd really only notice those bits if you studied it too much!
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