As most of you know the hubby is a plumber and when I showed him an idea on Pinterest that involved using old outside faucet handles as hooks he was ready to get to work. Our laundry room was in dire need for a shelf and a coat hook. There is currently a storage bench for shoes but that was turning into a catchall for all the coats and backpacks.
I found two old pieces of wood in my parent’s barn (it is my favorite place to go pickin!) I was able to lightly sand them and layered stains with Minwax classic gray and walnut like I did for the pipe shelves.
Now, where do you find used and older styles of outside faucet handles? Well, I have a connection through my plumber. (wink, wink) You can also find them at antique stores or even your local ReStore. We have a local building material store that has a whole bin full of them for $1 a piece that are all different colors. You could also call up a local plumbing shop to ask if they would be willing to save some for you.
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Aren’t they so pretty! I just love all the colors that you can find. Of course, you could also find ones that look the same and spray paint them any color that you want.
Materials:
- Wood for shelves (length of ours was 41″ and widths varied for each board as the shelf (9″) is not as wide as the hook one (11″)
- Stain or paint for the shelves (I used Minwax Classic Grey & Walnut)
- 3/4″ Wood screws to attach the bracket (the length of these will all depend on your board thickness)
- GRK Multi-Purpose Screws (These are the screws we used to attach it to the wall)
- Stud Finder
- Decorative shelf brackets (ours measured 8″ x 9.5″)
- Outdoor faucet handles (used or here are new ones)
- Double-ended Self Tapping Screws
- Hex nuts (we used 1/4″, you will need 2 per hook)
- Drill (Milwaukee is Justin’s favorite)
Step 1:
Find or buy the boards that you will use for your hooks to attach to. I used two boards because I wanted an “L” shape so that I had a shelf on top for decor or storage. You could just use one board if you wanted to. Stain or paint the boards to your liking.
If you are using two boards then take your brackets and attach them to your boards. You could use wood glue for extra support if you want to, we didn’t think it was necessary.
Step 2:
Find the spot in your home where you want to install your shelf (you probably already know based on how long your boards were). The hubby installed the shelf using six long multi purpose screws into the studs using a stud finder.
Step 3:
Here comes the trickier part: the faucet handles. Justin found double ended self tapping screws at the hardware store. These are not your normal screws. There are wood threads on one end and machine threads on the other end. We used these so that the faucet handles could screw onto the machine thread end to create the hook.
Start by pre-drilling where you want the hooks to be placed. Justin used a 3/16″ drill bit and then hand screwed the wood threaded end into the hole. Then in order for the faucet handle to not move you will want to screw a nut on before the faucet handle is put on.
We then ran into a snafu with the faucet handles as they each had a small lip on the back so that when we went to screw them on the other nut couldn’t be screwed onto the front to keep the handle in place. To keep this from happening you could buy longer self-tapping screws. Since he already had bought these we decided to make it work. Justin used his table grinder to grind down the lip on the back.
Step 4:
After we solved this problem all that was left was to screw on the nut to the front of each handle.
And as you can see below it works great and it was so much fun! It combined my passion for reusing (faucet handles and wood) and DIY and it was a great project to complete with the hubby. And I just love the way it looks it our laundry room. I am looking forward to not having coats and backpacks strewn across the bench anymore!
Sources:
- Laundry sign-Hobby Lobby
- Wreath-Marshalls (similiar ones)
- Basket-garage sale
- Flower container-garage sale