Staying locked up can make one go crazy, or like in my case, make their spouse go crazy. I make my husband go crazy, pretty much because he thinks I’m crazy. He thinks I’m crazy because I absolutely love staying busy doing projects around the house, for the house, outside, inside, up, down…… all the way around, I just love HOME PROJECTS!! & What’s a better way to spend their quarantine than making your home more pretty. Today, I made a beautiful outfit rack. I wanted something to put in my room to hang outfits for the day, maybe hang hats, scarfs and bags too. I’ve been wanting one for a while now, but didn’t really care for your original clothing rack you can buy at your local store, I wanted something a little bit different, a little more me. Recently, I came across a picture of a rack and immediately wanted it. When I clicked on the link, of course, it was hundreds of dollars….. you know what I say to that……. “I can make that!!!” So I did 🙂

I started off by making a Home Depot trip. Most closet poles or wooden square rods will work great for a clothes rack. Closet poles run from 10-30$ for 96” of pole. I found some wooden poles that had all these different shades of wood, they just had a pretty rhythm to them, so I had to have them; they were located in the closet pole area/wood section. The next thing I bought was a pack of 3/8” dowels & a doweling kit (3/8). I ended up using a couple furniture gliders, that I already had at home, at the bottom of a couple of my poles to make it stand even. I wasn’t precise on my lengths, so you may want to purchase a pack to save a trip just in case, or maybe you’ll be more careful when putting yours together…..actually just buy a pack, they’re just a few dollars and you can return them if you don’t use them 🙂 I already have a miter saw, clear stain, and wood glue, so all I really needed to buy for this project were the three items: (poles, dowels, & dowel kit.)

Things you’ll be needing

• Wooden Poles
• 3/8 Wooden Dowels
• 3/8 Wooden Dowel Kit (comes with a 3/8 drill bit, but you may already own one)
• Wood Glue
• Furniture Gliders
• Miter Saw
• Drill

See what I was talking about when I said, “the wooden poles had all these different shades of wood, they just had a pretty rhythm to them,” I was right, huh? I think so! The four smaller poles are for my rack legs, & the longest pole is the one that I cut into the 8, 12″ pieces.

Prior to buying my poles, I had an idea of how I wanted it to look. I needed four poles, all different lengths, but not off by much, a inch or two, and one pole to cut into 8 pieces. I cut the four poles to the sizes I wanted there at Home Depot so I didn’t have to further worry about it. The 8 pieces are the poles that I will hang the clothes up on and use to stabilize the bottom. I wanted my hanging poles to be a foot long so I bought a pole (8 X 12’=96”) 8 ft. long, plus a couple inches more for wiggle room.

After getting home and setting up my “work area,” I started measuring. For every 12 inches, I made a mark. From that mark on, I made more marks after every 12 inches, I did this until I had 8, 12 inch pieces/little poles. I was going for more of that perfect, imperfect look, so at the end of the 12 inch poles, I very carefully cut little slices at the ends of both sides. If and when you do this, be cautious, they’re small cuts to be making on a miter saw and because they’re so tedious, it’s dangerous. Also, keep in mind that you can’t make your slices to a small angle because you’ll need majority of that middle area to drill a hole into.

Now that we have the, already cut, 4 poles and now the 8, 12 inch poles, it’s time to drill holes. In the very center of both ends of the 12” poles, use the drill bit that came with your doweling kit and drill your holes. I measured half the wooden dowels to the bit and capped it there on the bit with the metal piece that came with the kit, this way you don’t go to deep into your wood to where your dowel slips to deep into it. The dowel needs to fit half way into the end of the 12” pole and half way into the longer, standing pole. The metal piece that came with the bit to prevent it from going in to deep kept sliding with time, so I used a piece of duck tape to help me know when to stop drilling.

After I made my holes into all of the 12” poles, I needed to make holes into the long poles now. This was a little tricky because the holes have to line up to the meeting pole exactly, or it will end up lopsided. I took the two poles that I wanted connected together, and laid them side by side. At the bottom of them both, I laid them to where they’d be flesh on the ground together, when standing up. Next, I took a pencil and marked a little line in the middle of the poles, to where the marking hit both the poles. This way, both poles had a mark at the same spot. I did this at the top and bottom area.

Opposed to the rack that I seen and originally wanted, I didn’t want my clothes rack to take up to much space in my room. So instead of having my poles line up in a straight line, I drilled 4 of my other holes for my other poles at an angle so it made more of a triangle effect instead of a straight line. Confusing, I know. ***Drill four of your holes into the center piece of your rack at a slant, that way your other two parts of your stand come in closer and take up less room.

Once I had all all of my poles connected, I noticed they were off a smidge in length on some poles, so I used glider slides under a few of the poles and then I stained them with clear glaze. You can get more creative and maybe put some small hooks on the sides for hats and scarves, (I’m thinking about doing this) and possibly put curtain rod finials up at the top for a more decorative look. You can find these knobs back in the drapery section, they go on the ends of curtain poles.

VOILA!!! Pretty to the T Clothes Rack!!!