For days 19 & 20 of my personal Make Something May challenge I wanted to do something I’ve had planned for quite a while and never completed….for no good reason. So in all transparency, I started this project yesterday, but didn’t finish it until today. Not because it actually takes a long time to complete, but mainly because I didn’t have quite the right supplies.
So what I used for this project was:
- 2″ x 2″ piece of lumber cut into 3-18″ pieces
- 2 wooden dowel rods cut into 3-18″ pieces
- 6 cup hooks
- 3 – 3″ wood screws
- electric drill
- electric saw
- sander
- wood stain
- drop cloth
To get the party started, I measured out 18″ on both the 2″ x 2″ piece of lumber and the dowel rods. I then used my jigsaw (honestly, not the best saw to use for this, but it’s the first one I was able to grab – a handsaw would work just fine) to make the cuts on the pieces I measured. Once I did that, I pre-drilled holes for the screws and the cup hooks into the front and bottom respectively and sanded all sides including the ends.
Once I had the sanding completed, I used an old pocket rag to apply the stain to both the 2″ x 2″ pieces and the dowel rod pieces and let them sit to dry. Not gonna lie, I didn’t stain the back of the 2″ x 2″ pieces because I wanted to get them on the wall quicker without ruining the paint if I misplaced them. :/
Isn’t it pretty?!?!
Two of my big hold-ups that turned this into a two-day project (which seriously wouldnt’ve taken under an hour otherwise) were that my dowel rods were too big for my fish-hook earrings to fit around and that my screws were not long enough (I started with 2.5″ inch screws).
So once I went to Home Depot to get the right supplies, it was smooth sailing. It only took a few minutes to stain the right sized dowel rods, so then I screwed in the cup hooks, pre-drilled a hole in my wall for the screw to go in, then started screwing the 2″ x 2″ to the wall.
That’s literally all there is to it. It’s super easy and quick and anyone can do it, despite your skill level. 🙂 And while I don’t have a pic to give you the full disclosure, I actually put these up behind my bedroom door! Our master bedroom is anything but… We don’t have an attached bathroom or walk-in closet, but rather a room just big enough for a king-sized bed and some mirrored sliding closet doors. So space is at a minimal in our old 1956 ranch, so hiding these behind the bedroom door seemed like the perfect option. If you have more room and can make each piece longer to accommodate more earrings, by all means, please feel free to do so. I would just recommend that you reinforce your dowel rod with extra cup hooks spaced sporadically throughout should you start to notice your dowel rod sagging.
Good luck and happy organizing! 🙂
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