Salty Peanut Stitchery: Bakers Rack Upgrade

Seeing as how this is my first post, let me begin by saying hello and thank you for visiting my blog. I think, like many other bloggers, I have a wide variety of lofty goals for this blog, but I think an appropriate first post should include a dedication. My father used to tell me that I should write a book, since I've had so many experiences and seen so many things over the years. A book always sounded like a noble goal, but it also sounded like the kind of goal that you put on your bucket list. It would be sandwiched right up there between running a marathon and skydiving. Not that those aren't achievable goals but, like their literary list mate, they seem a little impossible when you're standing at the starting line or looking out the open doorway of the plane. So I think I will try to use this blog as a beginner book and I will try to post my ideas and my experiences (both crafty and otherwise) one day or one chapter at a time.

With that in mind, I'd like to share one of my more crafty experiences with you. I hope it will help inspire you to consider recycling some home furnishings of your own.

I bought this little bakers rack at a garage sale about a year ago for $10, I think.

Since then, it's sat in a corner of our living room and acted as a piece of half hidden storage. After we fixed up the entryway of our home, I thought that we could use some shoe storage there. Preferably some hidden shoe storage. As you can see, the upper part of the rack is open, and I didn't necessarily like this look. Luckily I had some really cute printed burlap that I had gotten as a remnant at Jo Ann's Fabric. The burlap had these vintage skeleton keys printed on it that I just loved.

So I decide that I'm going to use the key burlap fabric as a backdrop to give the upper part of the bakers rack a little more personality. We (my fiance and I) laid the rack down on some butcher block paper so that I could use a marker to trace out the outline of the area I wanted to put the burlap in. Apparently the remnant I had bought was just a hair short of what I needed, so I found some black burlap (another remnant purchase) that we could use on highest part of the bakers rack to accent the key fabric. We used a staple gun to attach the fabric to the back of the bakers rack. As you can see from the pic, it looks pretty good so far. I really like that key fabric.

So now, what to do about the hidden shoe storage part? Fortunately, the wine racks are exactly the right size to fit my HUGE shoes, so I didn't have to do any tweaking to that part of it. I just needed to figure out how to hide the shoes once I got them in there. My solution was to create a sort of skirt for the bottom section. The skirt would be fitted onto the sides with pieces of velcro to hold it in place. Here you can see the side pieces in place.

In the front, I attached a small curtain rod as close to the main shelf as possible in order to try to hide the rod. After much consideration, I went with a quilting cotton that looked like pickled wood. I thought it was cute at the time, but now I'm not so sure about it. I didn't want a black because I was afraid it would drown out the entire piece.

I hemmed the bottom of the "skirt" so that it just skimmed the floor and wrapped around the front corner so that when the front curtain part is closed, it is difficult to see where one part ends and another begins.