DIY wooden shoe rack

We are refurbishing the top floor of our house. My wife’s wardrobe is on this floor. She has a lot of shoe’s although she claims that she doesn’t have enough 😉 Anyway the shoes no longer fit in her wardrobe so I promised her to make a nice shoe rack. This shoe rack can free up some space in the wardrobe. I found it hard to find a nice looking DIY design online of a shoe rack. Finally I found one that my wife finds appealing on ourhomefromscratch (BTW a very nice website for all kind of DIY projects varying from decorating to food). The problem is that for this shoe rack pocket holes are needed to connect the shelves to the stands. Well I don’t have a pocket holes jig so I needed another solution. I decided to use dowels instead. I have a dowel jig and have some experience with them.

My wife’s (unfinished) shoe rack made out of plywood.

Here is the plan. I bought two plywood boards of 122x61x1.2cm (4’x2’x0.5″). I cut six shelves out of one board each shelf 40x30cm (roughly 16″x12″). I don’t have a table saw so I used a Dremel DSM20.

Plywood boards that I started with.

With just two plywood boards I made six shelves and two posts.

First I marked the stands with lines where I want the shelfs. The shelfs will be in a slight angle. This way the shoes will be accessible and nicely presented. Next I drilled 6mm (1/2″) dowel holes in the stands. I drilled the holes in the shelfs.

Marking in the stands and holes drilled.

Dowels in the shelf. A dowel jig comes in handy for this.

With all the holes drilled and dowels in place To get an idea of the result I fitted all the shelfs in one of the stands and then fitted the other stand onto it (all without glue because in this stage I still want to diassemble the shoe rack). The shoe rack looks nice however there a couple of problems. First some of the shoes tend to slide of the shelf. I will attach a wooden strip at the end of the shelf to prevent the shoes from sliding.  A more serious problem is that at some spots the shelfs and stands have a little space in between them. I’m afraid that just glue isn’t strong enough to solve this however this can be solved with screws that tighten the shelfs and stands together. To be continued.

All shelfs fitted onto one of the stands.

Thanks for reading!