Home Decor: DIY: Coat Rack for Children's Room

DIY: A Fun Coat Rack for Children

I’ve never been one for boring, but was assigned to work on a coat rack to hang miscellaneous items in my 6 year old niece’s room. So I decided to take the DIY route, and make one. As always, I’m most inspired by natural materials, and found the branches for this coat rack in my neighborhood. I always found such elements interesting and fairytale like!

And yes we chopped off an old drawer cabinet we had lying around at home. My niece and I decided on the design and colors together. Boy, did she feel like little red riding hood, getting all adventurous, then we finally agreed upon something she liked and I could manage beautifully too. Mosy of the materials we had at home. A couple hours of delightful family crafting later voila – a coat rack!

Materials Needed:

Base wood Branches
Leather Scraps
Paint
Colorful paper
Modge Podge
Foam Brush
Hammer
Screws
Power drill
Exacto knife
Wooden backboard (you may use something lying at home, like I did)
Sandpaper
Hand saw

How To:

Sand your wooden backboard first.
TIP: Always sand with the grain until all edges are smooth. You don’t want anyone getting a splinter.

Cut out your colorful paper into the shape you’d like using a ruler, pencil and scissors. We went to Blicks to get this special waxed, dried flower paper.

Apply the Modge Podge evenly to the back of your paper with the foam brush. Apply paper to the wooden backboard. Smooth out any wrinkles.

Apply Modge Podge over the paper, at least an inch beyond the edge of the paper onto the wood. This will secure the paper to the wood with an overcoat preventing tears, and allowing you to wipe the item with a damp cloth to clean it. Follow the bottles instructions for drying, many times you have to let it dry overnight.

Here is the interesting bit, where we went out to the ‘woods’ to gather the most artistic branches we could find! I cut the branches off the larger branch in such a way that they can be nailed to the backboard and provide the protruding branch to hang things off of.

Cut your leather to size using an exacto knife. We continued with the triangle theme. Leather added a very nice texture and contributed to the overall look I was wanting to achieve.

Hammer short nails into the edges of the leather to keep it in place.

Make a stencil to paint over. Use cardboard, or in this case an old poster. Grab your exacto knife again and after drawing your design use the knife to cut it out.

Place your stencil in the area you’d like the design. Use a paint brush to paint over the stencil. The most important thing is to hold the edges of the stencil down when you’re painting over it to ensure the paint doesn’t get underneath the stencil smearing your design.

The designs are done, now it’s time to hammer in the branches! Mark the backboard with a pencil where you would like the branches. Secure the branches at 2 points – one at the top, and one at the bottom with nails. Hammer slow and steady so as not to crack the wood. Finish both branches, and you’re done….almost!

Now it’s power tool time! We’re going to secure the rack to the wall. Use a power drill to drill holes in the rack and the wall. Then insert screws into the rack with the power drill. Finish them into the wall through the holes you drilled. First make sure to ensure your rack isn’t crooked with a level. The bubble should be in the middle of the two lines in the middle.