By Lauren Burke Meyer

Built in the 1960s, our Colonial-style home’s miniature coat closet was not cutting it for our family of five. Read on to see how my husband’s DIY project for a nautical coat rack saved the day. 

The Backstory

If I had to give a Yelp review for buying a home during the pandemic, I would give it a one out of five stars. Do. Not. Recommend. 

With low inventory, plus sky rocketing list prices and even higher sale prices, it was a “Hunger Games” era of real estate. In 2020, my family thankfully landed our dream home in the highly coveted Chartwell community in Severna Park, Maryland, where I grew up. The town boasts great schools, parks, pools and water access. 

Somehow we lucked out with a rare five-bedroom home. Our three daughters are truly the lucky ones, not having to share a room. 

While a pretty open floorplan for a single family home built in 1968, there was one surprising drawback. The coat closet was a mere 20” in width. Where did the previous owners’ put their jackets for the wide-ranging weather Marylanders face? Our girls are ages five, two and four months. Between their rain coats, jean jackets, winter coats or fleece onesies, there would be no room left for two sets of adult outerwear. 

The Project

If Maryland does “crabcakes and football,” nautical décor should be a close third on that list. The previous owner installed a four-pronged coat rack on the wall of the garage. After two years of our coats constantly falling off the small pegs, we decided to upgrade with a longer, sleeker — and yes nautical — coat rack.

One set of doors in our home offered inspiration. The boat hook handles would not only execute our theme but be highly functional when holding various outerwear. A serendipitous moment of form meeting function. 

Project Details

After searching online, my husband found a wall mounted coat rack that we loved. The only issue? It cost $130. It was an easy decision to replicate it ourselves. 

Materials featured in this DIY project include: 

• Boat Cleats 
• Blue Paint
• Poplar Boards 
• Minwax Polyurethane
• Varathane Wood Stain
• Varathane Wood Conditioner
• Kreg Pocket-Hole Screws 
• Wood Glue

Tools used: 

• Power Drill
• Miter Saw
• Kreg Pocket-Hole Jig
• Clamp
• Tape Measurer

After getting all materials and tools together, it was time to get to work. 

The first step was to cut the poplar boards to our desired size. We chose two sizes for the boards: 

• 2 1/2”x 3/4” for our middle board with the blue paint
• 1 1/2” x 3/4” for the top and bottom rails

Then, we cut the poplar boards down to 3’ wide to maximize the space we had along the garage wall.

Next, we quickly sanded down any imperfections in the boards. This shouldn’t take more than a few minutes.

For the 1 1/2” size boards, we applied wood conditioner, which helps the wood take the stain more evenly for a better finish. Without wood conditioner some woods appear splotchy after receiving the stain. Shortly after the wood conditioner was complete, we applied the wood stain.

For the larger 2 1/2” piece, we painted the board blue to help break up and brighten the piece. We already conveniently had the blue paint from other home projects. For a small job like this, consider buying one to two small paint samples from Home Depot. They’re only $5 a piece, and one sample is more than enough to do multiple coats on a piece and project of this size. We even did two layers of coat racks, but more on that later. To note, we stained and painted the boards prior to assembling to guarantee nice, crisp lines.

Afterwards, we were ready to assemble the boards. We flipped the center board over and used the Kreg pocket hole jig to screw pocket holes on both sides of the board to help attach the smaller top and bottom rails.

We applied a thin bead of wood glue to the edge of the boards and clamped them together. While clamped, we used the Kreg 1 1/4” pocket hole screws to help hold the pieces together.

After the wood boards were assembled, we took a Minwax polyurethane to seal the piece. The polyurethane helped give the piece additional durability against scratches.

Once the polyurethane dried, it was time to install the boat cleats. We laid out the boat cleats for the number and spacing we felt worked best for us. We ordered a 16 pack of Simplified Living 4” Dock Cleats on Amazon and ended up using only 11 cleats. The ones we chose were galvanized iron, rust resistant and weatherproof. Side note: regarding the rest of the tools and supplies, they can be obtained from Home Depot or most hardware stores.  

We decided to do two offset layers of cleats to maximize our limited wall space in our garage. Once the boat cleats we’re screwed in, we hung the coat rack on the wall, and it was time to use. No more coats falling on the floor!

The finished product in all its nautical glory. You can see how offsetting the boat cleats worked nicely for having two rows of coats and bags.

Discover and Share More

Follow my handy husband on his Instagram handle @PinkDoorandMore to see more DIY projects he somehow manages to accomplish with a wife and three daughters always distracting him. 

What’s more, share your home projects with us. You might see your own residence in an upcoming Family Home of the Month.