Do you have endless bottles of wine cluttering up your kitchen countertops and cabinets? Well, why not get creative and build your very own wine rack from a wooden pallet? Wine racks from retailers can be really expensive, especially when considering they’re often just pieces of wood. Therefore, a more affordable option is to make your own! It’s extremely simple and rewarding when you’re able to hang something in your home that you’ve invested your own time and energy into. So, what’s the first step in building your very own wooden wine rack?
Step One
Firstly, you’ll need to obtain a pallet without blocks and remove the frame boards using the appropriate saw blades for a reciprocating saw to slice through the nails. Typically speaking, this will be a metal cutting blade. As you do this, you should ensure that you leave two frame boards on each end, as this will be the beginning of your wine rack’s frame. This is left here in order to maintain the rustic appearance and the integrity of the existing nails.
Step Two
Following this, you should lay out the removed boards and hit them repeatedly with a hammer. With this being said, you need to be careful that you don’t break the boards. You’ll only need to do this with one side of each of the boards, as only one side will face you once your final product is assembled. Additionally, you’ll need to hammer one side of the end pieces, as this will be the front facing base.
Step Three
Next, you’ll need to stain these boards with one dark stain and one lighter stain. The dark stain will be used to highlight the hammered areas, whilst the light stain will be used for the remaining area. You don’t need to worry about your staining capabilities being perfect, as you’ll sand the product later on.
When it comes to staining, you should apply the dark stain with a paintbrush to the hammered areas, leave it for five to ten seconds, depending on the depth of your desired stain, and wipe it away. Following this you should coat the entirety of the board in the light stain and repeat the process.
Step Four
Then, you can cut down the middle of the pallet frame, parallel to the end boards that you didn’t remove, resulting in two wine racks. Following this, you can take two of your stained boards and space them half an inch apart along the back of your frame. You should then mark with a pencil where the top of your board meets the three posts.
You can then use a miter saw to cut the three boards where they were marked. Upon making these cuts, you can craft your own design using a jigsaw – just take care not to cut straight through the board.
Next, you can drill two holes per post and affix your two stained boards.
Step Five
After this, you can take a stained 1×4” piece of wood and cut it into four separate sections. These will act as the foundations for the wine bottles. Once you’re happy with their positioning, you can glue them in place, clamp them for an hour, and then secure them with screws.
Step Six
Next, you can use the scraps of the 1×4” pieces to create 1 ¾” spacers to be glued to the bottom of each of the posts.
Step Seven
Finally, the two remaining stained boards need to be cut to create wine glass holders. You should mark where these will sit on your rack with a pencil. The openings should be 1 ¼” wide and the space between them should be 2 ½”. You can then smooth everything out using some sandpaper.
