Today is exciting because it is the first time I am having a guest writer on my blog. My sister and her husband just finished a wine glass rack/beverage center for their apartment in NYC. They live in a small 2-bedroom 5th floor walk-up (as in no elevator - ugh) so they are very space conscious. This project fit the bill of being both small space friendly and stylish. So here's my sister with the nitty gritty on their project...
DIY Wine Glass Rack
Living in New York City, I’m always on the lookout for
storage solutions, whether it’s a pretty container to store stuff that has to
be visible or a smarter way of organizing the stuff itself. About 2 years ago, I bought an end table that
I re-appropriated as a small bar cart to relieve my overflowing kitchen
cabinets of glassware and my small collection of liquor. This worked well until my husband moved
in with his collection of glassware and larger collection of liquor. Pretty soon we were back to same problem only
this time with an overcrowded tabletop in the corner of my living room plus overflowing kitchen cabinets.
Enter the Pottery Barn catalog, the source of decorating
inspirations and aspirations. Inspirations
because it does have so many lovely things and aspirations because everything
costs an arm and a leg. However, it did
have a really nice looking wine glass shelf- dark wood shelf with a cast iron
rack for the glasses underneath. It was
a great solution but I didn’t want to pay $80 for it. Unfortunately it never went on sale and when
I finally had a discount code, the one I wanted was out of stock.
At that point, I decided to just make the damn shelf myself
and given what an easy project it turned out to be, I wish I had done it
sooner. Plus the whole thing cost just
over $30. We bought some pretty cast
iron brackets at an antique store (about $8 each), got a salvaged piece of wood
from my father’s basement (free), and ordered the under the counter wine
glasses rack from Amazon ($15). The wood
happened to be leftover from an old bookcase so it was already stained. We just cut it to fit and used a little stain
I already had to finish the ends.
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Here you can see the hummingbird design in the brackets. |
This project is essentially the same as putting up a regular
shelf- it doesn’t get much more basic. The
most important thing is to accurately measure to make sure the rack and the
brackets fit on the shelf bottom and that you have lined up the holes for the
brackets correctly on the wall. This is
especially true if you go with antique brackets since the holes tend to
irregular and the bracket itself didn’t lie flush to the wall or the
shelf. Obviously, if you use heavy
brackets like cast iron, get some serious anchors for the wall. The last thing you want is the shelf to fall
out of the wall with all those glasses attached.
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The rack before being attached to the shelf. |
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Free!!! |
Beyond the measuring and the anchors, everything else is
really a matter of aesthetics for the bracket style, finish of the wood, size
of the rack, etc. You could pretty
easily paint the rack black to match the brackets, turn the brackets the other way, or add molding to the edges for a fancier
look.
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Installing the assembled rack on the wall. |
We’re really pleased with how it turned out and how much
more storage it gave us. An easy
project that was done in one afternoon for less than half the cost of the store
bought version!
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Attached to the wall - waiting for the glasses. |
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All decked out - looking great! |
I think their beverage center turned out great. I can't wait to see what else they come up with next. Hopefully she'll write some more posts for me:)
~ Gold Shoe Girl ~
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That is terrific. Love your site.
ReplyDeleteLymington, UK.
Its cute!!!
ReplyDelete