A place for the little coats

Our old coat rack for the kids to use 

   I had a request from Vanessa to make a coat rack in their new home for the kids to use.  One that could be mounted a little lower on the wall and while I was drawing up some ideas on how to do that, I thought it was also time for me to do sometime with our kid's coat rack.   It is in our entry way and when the grand kids come to visit during the colder months this is the place where all the little coats get hung.  (Of course when they are not here, it is a rack to hang bags, wet towels, cat toys, and anything else.)   This old one was installed long before we moved in.   It is made out of plastic and a couple of the hooks are broken.  

Alder wood pieces cut to size.  

 
 Some of the boards that I salvaged from Shawn's construction were boards that were
alder wood.   I never have worked with alder wood before and it is not too common so it was kind of a new adventure for me to try this out.    Of course I ended up gluing smaller boards together to make larger ones but gluing is something I like to do.  I am making two of these and both will be made from the alder wood.    One will be bigger and installed in Shawn's house and the smaller one would replace the "plastic" one that we have in the picture above.

Running the sanded pieces by the router table. 

   In the process of building these I used wooden dowels for all the joinery.    Both racks will be totally made without any screws or nails.    (Just my old favorite - Tite bond- glue.)     I ran all the pieces by my router table and either rounded over the corners and put a little decorative cove on the underside of the top shelf.   Of course there was a little  sanding that had to take place.   (Have I ever mentioned how much I love to sand?)  Lately I have tried to do a little better job with the sanding part of my projects.    I guess it is more of an important step than I am willing to admit to.

Staining with golden pecan stain

     I am in the process of staining the one that will go into our house.    The larger one will be stained and finished by Shawn or Vanessa.    They have the stain on hand that matches the rest of the finished woodwork in their house and it makes sense just to use that.     I have come up with a different approach to mounting theirs on the wall.    Once that is done, I will probably blog more about that.

   In our house, I guess there is a collection of various stains.   The woodwork is all the same, but over the years I have tried various colors of stain on the projects that I've done.   Lately I have been leaning towards the golden pecan stain.  

It is a kids' coat rack - Not a place to store cat toys! 

     I added some heavy duty type coat hooks to ours and mounted it back into the wall where the plastic one once stood. That alder wood makes for a nice finished project.   It will be interesting to see how the other one turns out.

   In the mean time, this rack is ready to hold a few hats and a ton of small people's coats.