Learn How to Make a Personalized Coat Rack

Hi friends! I showed you this adorable coat rack in my post about laundry room organization. If you missed it, click here. It has come in so handy!! I mainly use it to hang our pool towels to dry on. So, if you need a place to hang jackets or towels, read on and learn how to make a personalized coat rack specific to your family.  

history of our personalized coat hooks

When the boys were little, I bought these cute letter coat hooks from Pottery Barn. They hung on a wall beside the garage door and provided the perfect place to hang our coats.  The hooks worked great, but as the kids got older, their coats got heavier, and the hooks started pulling away from the wall. Rich reinforced them with toggle bolts which solved the problem. Unfortunately, when we took them down, we had to fix ten large holes in the wall. What a horrible job! Needless to say, I did not want a repeat of that scenario in Florida. 

After we moved, it quickly became apparent that we needed a place to hang our wet pool towels!  I remembered our “letter” hangers and thought they would be perfect for the laundry room.  Next, we just needed to figure out a way to mount them on a piece of wood.  I did some research on Pinterest and came up with a great idea. I decided to use five boards of varying lengths, placed vertically, rather than one board placed horizontally. Ready to learn how to make a personalized coat rack for your family!

How to Make a personalized coat rack part one

Gather

Items you need to do this project:

• 1″ X 8″ X 8 foot wood board(s) of your choice: Pine, Birch, Oak, etc. If your name has more than five letters, you will need another board.
• 1″ X 2″ X 8 foot wood board(s). I used pine.
• Saw (Sliding Miter Saw, Skill Saw, etc)
• tape measure
• pencil
• speed square or small t-square
• drill
• screwdriver
• Small wood screws. Enough for 4 per hanger boards and long enough to pass through 1″ X 2″ and go 1/4″ into hanger boards.
• Drill bit slightly larger in diameter than wood screw heads
• Drill bit slightly smaller than wood screw thickness
• picture hangers
• Letter coat hooks  (if you can not find hooks like ours, use a letter and put a separate hook underneath it)

DETERMINE The LEngth of BOARDS

First, we had to determine the sizes of the boards that we were attaching the letters to. This will depend, of course, on the width and height of your letter coat hangers. A 1″ X 8″ dimension board was the perfect width board to cut to length for our letters.

Next, we decided on the vertical length of each of our five boards. We just laid the letters down and used a tape measure to play around with lengths until we found something we liked.

Here are the lengths of our boards going from left to right, 16″, 22″, 19″, 22″, and 16″. The full width equaled 95″. The 1″ X 8″ X 8-foot board measured 96 inches long, so we were able to cut all five pieces from one board.

CUT THE Wood

To start, I used my tape measure to measure 16″ from the right end of the 1″ X 8″ board to mark the cut for our first board.

Next, I used my speed square and marked a good straight line for my first cut.

I want the full measured length of the board, so I lined up my saw to cut to the outside of the marked line. Since I measured from the right end of the board, this would mean cutting just to the left or outside of my marked line. Make sure your board is flush up against your saw guide and make a good square cut.

I need two 16″ pieces of wood, so I will begin by measuring 16″ and use a speed square to mark a line. I cut the board. Next, I took my first 16″ board and lined it up flush to the end of my remaining 1″ X 8″ to double-check they were the same length. Then I cut that board. I also need two 22″ cut boards, so I measured for 22″ on my remaining 1″ X 8″ board and made that cut. I repeated the same procedure, as above, then marked and made the cut for my second 22″ board. This left just enough 1″ X 8″ board remaining to make one more cut for the 19″ middle board.

I now have all five boards cut to length, so I’m going to stop the building process for now and let Donna paint the boards. When the paint is dry, we’ll finish building the project!

How to Paint a personalized coat rack

I have never tried to whitewash a piece of furniture before. But I’m always eager to try new paint techniques, so here goes! I have three cans of paint sitting in my garage, leftover, from the exterior of the house. To save money, I’m going to use the paint but add equal parts water, to give it a “whitewash” effect. I love to learn new ways to paint and this one is perfect for my personalized coat rack!

Gather

Collect or purchase the following items you need to do the project:

• plastic tarp
• tack cloth
• three colors of paint – I used Sherwin Williams: Pure White, Uncertain Gray, and Wall Street
• three paint brushes
• three stir sticks
• three plastic cups
• water
• spray bottle
• lint-free paper towels

Prep

1. Prepare your work surface. As you can see below, I used plastic and cardboard.

2. Clean your boards with a tack cloth to remove dust.

3. Mix the paint with water using a 1:1 ratio. I added equal parts of water to my three paint colors and stirred them. Now I’m ready to paint!

Paint

1. Use a paintbrush to apply your mixture in the direction of the wood grain.
2. Immediately use a lint-free paper towel to wipe the excess paint away.  Keep a spray bottle on hand and mist any area where the paint looks too thick or inconsistent.
3. Let dry for one hour.
4. If the color is too opaque repeat the process.
5. If you are going to hang your coat rack outside, I suggest you apply a protective finish.

Here is my first board before painting.

And here it is after painting one coat.

I wanted a little bit more color so, I did do a second coat. Just remember, if you want to see the grain of the wood, you will need to remove the excess paint with a lint-free paper towel, as shown in the picture below.

I love the subtle color of this technique. You can see the finished boards in the picture below.

How to Make a personalized coat rack part two

The paint has dried and Rich is going to take over. It’s time to learn how to put the finishing touches on your personalized coat rack.

Attach boards together

All the boards for our letter coat hangers are cut and painted. It’s time to attach them using 1″ X 2″ wood boards.

First, I laid out the boards face down on the workbench, clamped each end down, and measured the width of all boards together.

Next, I measured for that width minus 1/2 inch to make them not as visible and cut the two 1″ X 2″ boards to attach all our hanger boards.

I then placed the cut 1″ X 2″ in place (one across the top and the other across the bottom of our coat rack) and made pencil marks for at least two screws per hanger board.

Next, I picked a drill bit slightly bigger than my wood screw heads. I did this to pre-drill a 1/8″ recessed hole for each screw so they would be flush to the wood or slightly below. This would prevent scraping the wall up while hanging our coat rack.

Take the small drill bit and pre-drill a hole for your screws through the 1″ X 2″ board and slightly into the hanger boards.

With holes drilled, apply screws and tighten securely.

Hanger boards are tightly secured and this is what the end product should look like! Now for the fun part!

Attach letter coat hooks

Flip over the coat rack and determine where you want to attach each letter. We decided to center each letter on its board vertically and horizontally.

Clamp a metal ruler to the board to provide a guide. This will align your letters vertically.

Then I took a pencil and marked all the screw holes. I then drilled small pilot holes to easily start each screw and attached each letter with the wood screws that came with our hangers.

ATTACH HANGERS

Decide how you wish to hang your coat rack on the wall. We chose these picture/mirror hangers.

I measured the same distance from each side of our project to place each hanger in a similar location on the top 1″ X 2″ board. Next, I attached the hanger to the back. I marked the screw holes and attached them with wood screws. All done. Remember to select proper size wall hangers and screws. Consider the weight of the heaviest coats you might hang on it. When in doubt, use the higher weight capacity.

Here’s the finished project sitting on the floor. Now we just need to hang it!

Only two nails in the wall instead of ten! Woohoo! Love having a work of art that is personal to our family and super functional too!

I hope you enjoyed this DIY project! It’s so fun to learn how to make new things and now you have all the information you need to make a personalized coat (or towel) rack for your family! Let us know your thoughts in the comments below!

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Until next time, visit us on Pinterest, Facebook, and Instagram

Blessings, Rich and Donna

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