Sometimes You Should Just Buy The Thing And Forgo The DIY (My DIY Wall-Mounted Coat Rack Fail)

The other day, I was scrolling through reels, and I came across a beautiful hallway makeover. It caught my attention because the “after” had white wainscoting and a blue-green grasscloth on the walls. It was very “me”. But as I watched it for the fourth or fifth time, I noticed a beautiful brass wall-mounted coat rack. I scrolled through the comments to see if a source was given, and I found that it was from Rejuvenation.

I get asked on a fairly regular basis if we have a coat closet for guests. We don’t, so I thought that this wall-mounted coat rack would be perfect for the narrow wall space to the right of our front door. So I immediately looked up this coat rack, but found that it only had three double hooks. I really wanted a larger one with more hooks. They actually did have one, but it was $199, and that seemed like a lot of money for a brass wall-mounted coat rack.

I looked up others, but none of them seemed as nice as the Rejuvenation coat rack. And the only one that I did like just as much as the one from Rejuvenation was too wide for my wall space. So I got the clever idea to just make my own. I had this vision of a walnut backing with gold hooks on it. I found some really pretty hooks on Amazon (affiliate link), so when they came yesterday, I thought this project would be the perfect diversion from the dreadful storage closet project. (Yes, I’m procrastinating.)

And then I determined how I wanted my hooks arranged to determine how tall the plywood needed to be.

Once determined, I cut it down the right height.

I also have quite a bit of leftover walnut veneer from past projects, so I cut a piece and used contact cement to attach it to the plywood.

Once that was adhered to the plywood, I used a new, sharp razor blade to cut off the excess.

For the edges, I decided instead of using veneer, I would use the gold tape that I used on my studio cabinets.

Here’s how that looked once it was attached.

I tried couple of different ways to put the walnut backing on the wall, but everything I tried (like a sawtooth picture hanger and other picture hangers) made it stand out from the wall. So I decided to just screw the board to the wall directly through all four corners.

Here’s how that looked once it was fully attached to the wall.

To cover those screw heads, I used these huge gold tacks that I found to hang my oversized calendar in the studio, and I used wire cutters to cut the point off so that I was just left with the big round gold head of the tack.

And I hot glued those over the screw heads…

And then I started screwing on the hooks. After the first one was up, I started questioning this whole plan. I wasn’t loving it. But I decided to press on, and I put up the second one. It didn’t get any better for me.

I was so disappointed. Sometimes, I envision something in my head, and it turns out just as good or even better than what I had envisioned. Sometimes things don’t turn out at all like what I had envisioned. And this one was definitely a swing and a miss for me.

The real bummer is that when I was taking it down and trying to disassemble it, I stripped one of the screws, and so I can’t get this one off of the backer boards.

And then I tried to attach the hooks directly to the wall, and one of the screw heads twisted right off of the screw.

So my idea didn’t work out at all. All I wanted to do was procrastinate on the project I really needed to be working on 😀 , and do something quick and fun, and have some almost immediate gratification with a pretty but useful finished project. But that didn’t happen. All I ended up doing was wasting a valuable day when I could have finished my storage closet, and poking some holes in my wall that now need to be repaired.

But that’s okay, right? We win some, we lose some. And I like to share my failed projects because (1) that’s the reality of DIYing. Every creative is going to have a fair share of fails. But also, (2) I think even my fails can possibly spark another creative idea, if not for me, then possibly for you. I can’t even count the number of times I’ve watched someone online create something that I had no interest in, or something that I thought was downright ugly, but their process or the products they used sparked a creative idea for me

I should have just done that in the first place. But I’ll find a use for the other hooks. I need a hook or two by the back studio doors, and I’m sure I can use the rest on my future closet. So at least they won’t go to waste. And I’m glad about that, because they really are pretty.

Addicted 2 Decorating is where I share my DIY and decorating journey as I remodel and decorate the 1948 fixer upper that my husband, Matt, and I bought in 2013. Matt has M.S. and is unable to do physical work, so I do the majority of the work on the house by myself. You can learn more about me here.