Introduction: Children's Clothes Rail
In this video I show how I made this Children's Clothes Rail.
I haven’t posted on Instructables quite a few months, that's in part down to my wife and I recently having a baby. But I’ve been desperate to get back out and make something, so I thought I would make this cute little clothes rail for all of her clothes.
For this build you will need:
Wood Lumber
Spray Paint (US)
Step 1: Measure
I wanted to use some of the wood I already had in the workshop. So I used some CLS Timber from a leftover project and cut 2 pieces down to 120cm.
You can make this as tall as you like, but I wanted it to be able to be useable for us adults, and when my daughter gets a bit older she will still be able to reach it.
I took this to the mitre saw and cut it down to size.
Step 2: ReSaw
The wood was a little bit too chunky for this build, it really doesn't have to be that strong, so I took it over to the band saw and resawed it in half. I did this for most of the wood in this project. It would have been much easier if I bought wood that was already a bit thinner, but as I said I wanted to use what was on hand, and in the UK these are super cheap and readily available is the likes of Homebase and B&Q.
Then I cut another piece that was going to make the width of the clothes rail. I just guessed at roughly how wide I wanted this, and went with 80cm.
Then further cut more pieces at 30cm wide, these are for the bottom slats.
The bandsaw left a few rough marks, and generally, I wanted to smooth the whole thing a bit more, so I sanded all the wood up to 220 grit.
Step 3: Think Before You Cut
It was about now in the project that I realised I really should have put a little bit more thought into the order in which I was doing it. I now needed to drill the hole for the rail, so I clamped the twice pieces together. If I had done this first, no need to clamp and I would have got a slightly cleaner hole, but it worked out fine in the end.
I was using a 22mm wooden dowel for the rail, so I grabbed a 22mm hole saw bit and drilled a hole on both sets of legs.
Next, I cut down the dowel for the rail using the mitre saw again. I left this 10cm long at either end this would give us a bit of extra hanging space and I think it looks pretty cool.
Step 4: Paint
I used some masking tape and masked off an area around 60cm from the bottom. I then used some white spray paint and painted the bottom half white. I left the bottom slats off for this bit so they would be contrasted to the white colour. I ended up needing 2 coats of paint, but I still wanted to be able to see the wood grain underneath.
Step 5: Screw
I use a countersink bit and drilled and screwed all the slats together, and the side support pieces. I also added a couple of screws at the apex of legs to add a bit more support. Then I slid in the dowel rail. You can glue this in place if you want, but I left it loose so I can take it apart easily.
It is plenty strong enough for all the clothes, but maybe not a child swinging on it!
Step 6: Final Images
That's it complete. It was a nice and easy project, it took less than a day to make, and would have been quicker if I hadn't been filming, and I wasn't making the design up as I went.
If you would like some plans for this let me know, I am happy to try and make some.
