DIY Ladder Towel Storage

Hey Y'all......Charlie here again.  We have been super busy the last couple weeks.  Who isn't though, when these summer days have been so nice.  I have been going to therapy to try getting my knee back into shape, and Emily has been busy planning a baby shower for her best friend.  We also took some of our homemade creations to a farmers market last week.  I think this week we are actually event -free and its going to be awesome.  Oh, and in case you didn't see Emily's post from the other day, I got my wish.....we got a pool.  Hopefully this weekend it will be up and running.

It's been awhile since I've talked "DIY".  So I figured I would show you how to build one of my favorite parts of the bathroom.  The number one problem I see with most bathrooms is not enough storage space.  While facing this problem ourselves, I knew we needed something where we could store all of our bath towels.  Here's what we came up with...

This shelf allowed us to store all of our bath towels and hand towels neatly and still fit with the  bathroom theme.  Some of you are thinking that it looks complicated....but I assure you, you can do it!

First off, I'll give you a list of cut measurements for your boards.  This will allow you to make all your cuts at one time and then all you'll need to do is assemble.  For the entire project I used 1x4 Pine for the legs and about half a sheet of 1/4 inch plywood for the shelf bottoms.

2 - 66 inches - Back Legs
2 - 61 inches - Front legs
1 - 19 1/4 inches - Top

8 - 18 inches - Front & Back of Shelves
2 - 8 inches - Sides to Top Shelf
2 - 12 inches - Sides to 2nd Shelf
4 - 16 inches - Sides to 3rd & 4th Shelf

1 - 1/4 inch plywood sheet or pine project panel - (to be cut after you build your boxes)
1 - Bottle of wood glue

Once you have all of your boards cut, I would recommend that you stain or paint them whatever color you choose. This will make your life much easier..... (Emily had the joy of staining ours walnut and then whitewashing it after it was assembled)

Once you have all of your boards cut, you can start assembling the shelves.  I used a brad nail gun to help speed this process along.  I think if you wanted to give this project more of a rustic feel, using nails and a hammer would give it more of an antique feel.  If you do use nails and a hammer be sure to pre-drill your holes so you will not split the wood.  

Place your 18 inch board in the front and then place your side board inside and build a box.  Place a line of wood glue at each joint.  Build all 4 shelves.

Now we need to put a bottom on our shelf.  To help get a perfect measurement for each shelf I recommend that you place the built shelf on top of your plywood and trace it with a pencil.  Once you have all four shelf bottoms cut put a line of wood glue along bottom edge of your shelf and put plywood in its place.  I again used brad nails to attach the plywood.

Ok, now I'm gonna blame lack of pictures on Emily.  

Grab your 2 back legs.  Measure down 6 inches and attach your top shelf to each of your back legs.  I used wood screws since I knew my wife would strength test each shelf with overloaded amount of towels.  Once the top shelf is attached to the back legs you can continue down attaching the remaining shelves.  I then placed each remaining shelf 14 inches down from the one above it.  This measurement would accommodate the amount of space we needed for the towels we had. 

Now that the back legs are attached to each shelf we need to attach the front legs.  Place the front leg so that the upper right corner is touching the back leg.  I placed one screw loosely into the front leg so that it would stay in place and allowed me to pivot it out to the front of the bottom shelf.  Your front leg should look like the above picture at the top shelf and should look like the below picture at the bottom shelf.  Cut the back corner of the front leg at an angle and this will bring your leg flat.

Now you can attach your top shelf board across the back legs.  

If you painted or stained your wood ahead of time you have a completed Ladder Shelf!!!!!

Or in our case, the real work began. 

Em used her favorite Walnut stain, let it dry, and then used a little white paint and white washed it to get our final look we were going for. 

Take our advice, stain and paint first, assemble second.  Got it?

Well now that our lives seem to be back on the "normal" schedule, you should be seeing a lot more of us.  We have a ton of projects started that we are excited to share with you so make sure you're following along!

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