Coat Rack

An oddly over-complicated hat and coat rack

Overly Complicated Hat and Coat Rack

After 26 years of considering almost every project I would build as to how it might fit into a magazine article, what would my first project be? Who would have thought a hat rack?

It all began when Mary purchased a wall mounted hat and coat rack from Ikea. My lack of organization and penchant for tossing outerwear indiscriminately around is an ongoing frustration for her. And I get it. And I totally understand why her solution was a good one. The Ikea product would do the job efficiently, it was ready to go right now, and she would not need to hear me talking about how I could build one ... for weeks or maybe months.

But I was now free of the 9- to 5 and so I got busy with my own design.

So, I got out my graphpaper and some of my dad’s old drafting tools and drew it up old-school. I had some 1”-plus thick mahogany that I had recycled from a pallet. (Why a pallet was made from this lovely mahogany still intrigues me.) I wanted the coat rack to be wall mounted next to a big piece of bubinga cut off that I think of as art. And as a bit of a concession to my wife, I made use of some small hooks from Ikea that she had purchased.

There are only a couple of 90-degree angles in the piece. I wanted it to be reminiscent of prairie style design. It turned out that I did not have sufficient mahogany to make it as long as I had drawn ... but I was still happy with the outcome. Clamping it together was a bit of a trick. I finished it with Briwax Hard Wax Oil and mounted it to the wall with black recessed screws.