DIY Ladder Pot Rack

With the living room decor basically finished, I am thrilled to be moving on to the kitchen. We have been blessed with the most gorgeous orange toned oak cabinets (blah). I really think painting them will kick it up a notch in the looks department. This summer has been super busy with vacations and all of the other usual summer activities and we haven’t had a good stretch of time to devote to painting the cabinets. So until that time rolls around I have decided to make a few less time consuming updates.

I’ve been wanting to hang my pots and pans from a rack above the island because I’m lazy I prefer to have them right there instead of having to dig through the cabinets for them. I looked at some racks online but I wasn’t finding anything that really stood out to me. Then, inspiration struck and I had the idea to use a ladder as a pot rack. I knew I could easily build one because I had made one with some of my Christmas decor last year.

Lucky for us, the previous owners of our home left the hooks to their pot rack installed, so we didn’t have to worry about finding the studs and mounting them ourselves. Score! It’s all about small victories when it comes to DIY. 😉

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Materials:

• (2) 1×4 boards @ 6 feet long
• 3/4 inch wooden dowel
• Rustoleum Dark Walnut wood stain
• 1 3/8-inch screw eyes
• chain
• 1/8″ quick links
• 3-inch S-hooks
• toggle bolts for mounting to ceiling

I started with two 1×4 boards, cut to 5 feet. I also had a 3/4 inch wooden dowel cut into 11 inch segments to act as the ladder rungs. I stained them with Rustoleum Dark Walnut stain and distressed the corners and edges with a sander once it dried.

I spaced out how far I wanted my dowels (11 inches apart) and drilled a few holes (equal to the diameter of the dowels) halfway through the sides of the ladder so that the dowels would sit countersunk into the sides for better support.

Next I used a drill bit pre-drill holes through the dowels and the sides of the boards so that they wouldn’t split when I screwed the dowels into the sides. I used 1 1/2-inch screws and wood glue to attach the dowels to the boards. And the ladder was complete!

Time to assemble the hardware. I attached some 1 3/8-inch screw eyes into the ends of each side of the ladder.

To hang the ladder, I used a chain that was cut into about 11-inch segments (7 chain links each).

I also used a few quick links to attach the chain to the screw eye hooks. You can unscrew the little bolt part and then tighten it back up when you’re done hooking it through the screw eye.

With the mounting hooks from the previous owners already installed, all I needed to do was hang the ladder pot rack! I used large, 3-inch S-hooks to hang a few pots and pans and also a colander and mixing bowl.

Just imagine that the cabinets are painted a beautiful shade of white and all of our appliances match. We’ll get there. We’re actually in progress at the present moment. I can’t wait to share it all with you!

I just love it so much and it’s really nice to have my most used cooking tools right at my fingertips!

So, what do you think? Would you rather us share our kitchen updates as they go and then wrap it up with a lovely styled reveal of the entire space? Or are you more of a reveal first and then breakdown of the projects afterward?

This post was originally published at Domestically Speaking on April 30, 2015.