When we bought our house, the hallway featured a built-in coat rack.  It was a 1×4, painted the same color as the wall, and out fitted with a series of simple, wooden pegs.  It was functional, for sure, but just not all that attractive.

Will and I decided that we would pull that rack down and recreate it later to better match the casual elegance we are hoping for in our house.  And last week, we finally got around to doing just that.  Here’s our new coat rack:

It turns out that this is a great feature to have in the downstairs hallway of our house.  For starters, as is typical with any home built in 1930, ours is light on the closets (at least downstairs).  And the closet that we had designated as our coat closet is inconveniently situated behind a rocking chair.  We rationalized that the rocker would be easy to move for access to the closet.  But what has happened instead is that the rocker has BECOME our closet … where we drape jackets, hats, scarves, the dry cleaning, dog leashes … you get the picture.  Our hallway coat rack has really helped to corral all of that clutter. And what else is a hallway good for anyway?  Might as well be for hanging coats.

How’d we do it?  Glad you asked:

putty knife

STEP 1: MEASURE AND CUT

First things first you want to measure the length of your coat rack.  We were butting ours up against the frame of 2 doors which made finishing it off pretty easy.  If you don’t have 2 door frames (or even a door frame and a corner wall) between which to position your coat rack, you’ll want to consider how you’ll cap off the corners.  If using trim, you’ll need a miter saw to get the look right.  But we didn’t have to worry about that because the door frames helped us out!

STEP 2: AFFIX THE 1×4 TO THE WALL

We were working with a plaster wall so my hubby used special screws intended just for that purpose.  Whatever is right for your wall, make sure you sink your screws so that you can come back later and fill over the screw head with wood filler.  Will also popped a few nails in the 1×4 using his finish nailer for good measure.

STEP 3: AFFIX THE DECORATIVE TRIM

We chose this particular trim because we thought it echoed the patterns in the iron hooks. You could choose just about anything that is intended to help finish off an edge.  The best thing to do is to hold it up against your 1×4 while you are still at the store and see how it looks.  You’ll use the finish nailer to attach this trim.  This is an important step. You don’t want to use a regular old hammer and nails for this task because you will dent the design in your decorative wood. Not cool! So rent or borrow the finish nailer if you don’t have one and enjoy the rush of using a pneumatic power tool!

STEP 4: SINK YOUR NAILS

Now you’ll want to go along and sink any of the nails that the finish nailer didn’t sink, so that the heads are just below the surface of the wood.

STEP 5: FILL, PUTTY AND CAULK

Get your wood filler and fill in the holes where the screws were installed.  If you see any funky knots in the wood, you’ll want to fill those with wood filler too. Next you want to use some painter’s putty to fill in the tiny holes where the nails are  The smother you can get the surface, the more professional and like-it’s-always-been-there your coat rack will look.  Finally, use your caulk and caulk gun to fill in any cracks between the 1×4 and the trim or between the new rack and the door frame.

STEP 6: SAND SMOOTH

Once everything has dried, come behind and gently sand to make sure everything is smooth.

STEP 7: TAPE, PRIME & PAINT

Next you’ll want to tape off the wall around your wood installation and apply a coat of primer.  Kilz is good for making sure that any knots in your wood don’t show up later as dark spots.  Once that’s dry, apply 2 coats of paint.  We chose the same color as our trim but the possibilities there are really endless.

STEP 8: INSTALL THE HOOKS

We found our hooks on eBay.  I think we paid $20 for all 4.  But there are lots of hooks out there if you get to looking. The web is a great place (but make sure you comparison shop) as is the flea market. Nashvillians, there is a vendor at our monthly flea market that has every kind of iron hook you can imagine – from kid-appropriate to ranch-appropriate to more Victorian like ours.  We chose 4 and spaced them equally apart on the board.  Will pre-drilled the holes and then just screwed them right in with some brown screws (due to the stellar price, the screws were not included so we just picked those up at Home Depot.

And ta-daaaaaa!  A great place to hang coats and wrangle general clutter.  How do you like our fancy coat rack, inspired by the much simpler one that greeted us when we bought our house? Those comments make me feel loved, ya know!