DIY Pallet wood shoe rack idea|FREE PLANS
You come home after a long day at work. You take off your shoes and just continue with your daily activities. Meanwhile, the shoes accumulate at the door.
You realize that this mess has to stop and you look for a ready-made shoe rack. But after some searching, you will not find the appropriate shoe rack. Either you don’t like the offered models or they have an ugly color or they just don’t fit in your interior.
Well, from now on this is a thing of the past. I’ll show you how to make a nice rustic and unique shoe rack.
It’s a fun and easy project and it’s dirt cheap too.
Table of Contents
Be organized, make a shoe rack
To keep your shoes organized I will show you how to build a simple but beautiful shoe rack out of pallet wood.
To help you build this rustic shoe rack, I have downloadable plans available. You can find them below.
Attention! The sizes on the plans may differ depending on the type of pallets you use. Adjust these sizes in your project and use the plans as a guide.
Watch the video here
Before we start building
To prepare you for building this project, I have made a few handy lists.
In addition to a few personal protective equipment that I use*, I also list the materials as well as the (power) tools you will need to build this jig.
* Safety is always your own responsibility!
Safety first!
Materials I used for this shoe rack
(power)Tools I used for this pallet wood shoe rack
- Makita MLT100 table saw Watch my Unboxing video and my review video if you want to see more about this tool.
- Makita AF505N Brad nailer. Watch my Unboxing video if you want to know more about this tool.
- Brad nails 25mm
- Air compressor
- Festool sander
- Miter saw
- Kreg KMA multi mark and measuring tool
- Pica pencil to mark all the pieces.
Building the shoe rack step by step
Now that we have gone through the list of what we all need for this project, I will explain step by step how to make this shoe rack.
Let’s go!
Step 1 | Sanding
I know this is not the most popular activity but pallet wood is rough and to avoid hurting yourself and to get an nice finished shoe rack this is a necessary step.
Now that all the boards are still separate, you can do this quite fast.
To speed up the work I used my sander with 120grit sandpaper for this.
After cutting the boards to length you can quickly sand the sawn edges with the same sandpaper.
Step 2 | Cutting to length
Once everything is sanded, you can cut the boards to length.
The correct lengths depend on the dimensions of the wood you use. You can use the downloadable plans for this and adapt it to the size of your wood.
I’ll list what you need.
- 4 boards for the legs
- 9 boards for the shelves (Attention: these are not all the same length, further on in this blog I will give you more information)
- 6 short strips to connect the shelves to the legs
Tip:
Be sure to watch my video how I improved my budget miter saw with 3 simple adjustments: 3 Miter saw improvements I should have done before.
Step 3 | Making the legs
You will start by making the legs.
Make these legs by connecting the smaller strips to the boards. The bars will later serve to connect the shelves to the legs, so make sure they are at the correct height.
Also, make sure that the bars are mounted square to the legs.
To make the connections strong you can use wood glue and brad nails.
If you don’t have a nail gun, you can use regular nails.
TIP:
If you consider buying a nail gun, be sure to watch the video in which I review my Makita AF505N.
I have have used this nailgun for almost every project since I bought it, so I can highly recommend buying one.
Step 4 | Assembling the shoe rack
Once the legs are ready, the rack is very easy to make by connecting the shelves to the legs.
Pay attention! The middle board of the shelf is slightly longer and flush with the outside of the legs. This applies to the bottom and middle shelf.
Take a good look at the photos and plans you have downloaded.
For the top shelf, all three boards are equal and the same length as the outer dimensions of the shoe rack.
In this way, the boards cover the top of the legs.
Use wood glue and brad nails for every structural connection.
This will make your shoe rack a lot firmer.
Step 5 | Finishing the shoe rack
To finish the shoe rack nicely, you can apply a board around the shelves. This board will hide the connection of the legs to the shelves and gives the shoe rack a more robust appearance.
These boards were secured with brad nails.
To make the shoe rack firmer but also more beautiful, I added a board at an angle of 45 degrees between the legs.
Now the shoe rack is finished. In the next part i will show you how i build the decorative letter, so keep reading.
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Making the decorative letters
To make the shoe rack more decorative you can use the blocks of the disassembled pallet on which you paint the letters S-H-O-E-S.
Before you can paint the letters you will have to sanded the blocks first. For this, I used my sander with 120grit sandpaper.
After sanding, you can draw the letters in pencil.
As an example, I used the font Serif Bold.
You will find a printable template with the downloaded documents. By cutting out the letters you can use them to stamp the letters on the blocks or, as I did, first draw the lines with a pencil.
After drawing the lines you can paint the letters.
I used chalk paint for this because I had this in stock, but also because I personally like the texture and hue in chalk paint.
After the paint is dry you can sand it lightly to give the letters an outdated look.
Tip:
Because sandpaper can sometimes remove paint too quickly, I use an old piece of sandpaper for this application. It is less aggressive and the end result will always look nice.
This way you don’t have to buy extra sandpaper with a finer grit.
The project is complete and this shoe rack is now a real eye-catcher in your interior.
Now collect all your shoes and put them in the rack.
No more mess of shoes lying around from now on.
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Woodworking | DIY | Home decoration
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