Here’s a bigger project for you guys! I have a lot of clothes in my garage that I’m planning on selling at a garage sale when it warms up a bit. I had planned on putting them in bins but some are nice dresses and jackets, so I thought a clothing rack would help and take up less floor space. Luckily, I have a lot of scrap wood laying around and a good friend who loves woodworking projects.
We used:
A Drill
Dowel Rods
Scrap Wood
Jigsaw
Screws
Flush Cut Saw
Wood Glue
Sawhorses
Twine
Chisel
Screws
Masking Tape
Okay, I’m gonna do my best to lay out what we did in a simple way. First, we drew out our design – we did change it up a little bit but here is the initial design. We started by finding two pieces of wood that were a good height for the rack. They were about 4 or 5 inches wide, so we cut them in half lengthwise with the jigsaw to turn them into 4 skinnier, tall boards to use for the sides.
Our initial design was to make the sides triangles, but we thought about it and decided to make the top about a foot wide and the bottom be 3 feet wide so it is more of a trapezoid shape. We found some skinny wooden rods in my pile that were about 2 inches by one inch in cross section. We cut 2, one foot pieces and 2, three foot pieces (one of each for each side). To attach them to our main side pieces, we did a version of a rabbet joint by measuring the depth and of the skinny horizontal pieces and cutting them out of the long vertical pieces. Once they were all cut, we put a dab of wood glue at the connection, pre drilled a hole, and added a screw at each joint. This gave us our side trapezoids.
I wanted some extra “ladder” like pieces on the sides so I can hang belts or purses and to help stabilize a little bit. So we did the same thing as before. We found wood we wanted to use, cut it to length, placed it, traced where it overlapped our sides, and used the jigsaw to cut in about a quarter of an inch for a kind of rabbet joint. Here was the cool part though. Since we were in the middle of the wood piece, how did we get the wood out of the indent? We used the jigsaw to make mini cuts along the length we needed to cut out. Then used a chisel (you can also use a flat-head screw driver) to pry the pieces out and smooth the area. Now we could add a little wood glue, fit the pieces in, pre drill, add our screws, and use the flush cut saw to clean up the edges.
Now that our sides were done, it was time to connect them and make our base. We found 3 boards of similar depth and width (they were about 2×4 but not exact) and cut them to the same length. We didn’t measure anything to be specific, just used the length of the shortest board, because this is for my garage and I wanted it as large as we could get it. Our placements were: one board on the front of the bottom and one board along the back of the bottom then one along the top in the back. This stabilized the bottom into a rectangle and added an extra stabilization to the top so it wouldn’t wiggle. To hold our boards in place, we used masking tape since we couldn’t find my clamps (sorry, dad). We pre drilled and added 2 screws to each joint.
Now that our frame is finished, it’s time to add our dowel rods so we can hang clothes! We taped them in place using our masking tape and then used twine to tie them tightly against the frame. It took a few wrap arounds and a couple knots, but they can hold a good bit of weight now. This isn’t a perfect project by any means. We used wood I found in the trash and tools we already had rather than a full woodshop and new lumber. But the important part is that it was a fun project with a great partner and now I have a clothing rack for my garage sales!! 😊 As always, if you take any fun pictures or videos, tag me on Instagram @SmileMakePeopleWonder and use the hashtag #DandelionSmiles. Don’t forget to subscribe so you don’t miss out on the next exciting idea
Dandelion Smiles 