Keep your warm and cozy blankets close by, but neatly organized, by whipping up this simple blanket rack / quilt rack using just 6 pieces of wood and a few screws.
Hello my beautiful friends!
It is absolutely freezing her in SW Ontario with a -26°C windchill today. Yes, I know you prairie-dwellers get much colder than this, but my blood hasn’t thickened to your hardiness so I am freezing my kibibis off (I’ll leave it up to your imagination as to what body parts “kibibis” refers to – because yes, they are likely frozen off).
SO, for anyone with any kind of winter weather at all, chances are you have blankets in your home.
Maybe for show, maybe a throw. 😂
Mine are almost always in use in the winter with my girls and I each grabbing one before settling in with iPhones or the TV, so I have about 6 that I keep in our family room.
I’ve tried piling them neatly – no one puts them back.
I’ve tried rolling them and tucking them decoratively in a basket – no one puts them back.
You see the theme?
I needed a solution for blanket storage that required as little effort as possible to maintain, took up very little space in my family room, and made my blankets easily accessible to just grab and go.
I searched online for blanket racks and found a style that I liked – very simple, using only 6 pieces of wood and taking up a very small footprint in my floorplan.
PERFECT!
Simple blanket rack
You will need:
- (2) 34 ½” 2×2
- (2) 35″ 2×2
- (2) 15″ 2×4
- wood glue
- 2 ½” wood screws
The plans for this simple blanket rack are made for butt joints – butt joints being where you butt one piece of wood up against the other and then drill screws in from the outside. Butt joints are the easiest joints you can use, but will require wood glue to reinforce them or they will also be the first type of joint to break.
Because I’m in cabinetmaking school, I wanted to learn a new technique for making joints, so I opted to make my simple blanket rack using mortise and tenon joints.
You should have seen how I tried to describe the joint I wanted to use to my cabinetmaking teacher. 🤦🏻♀️. I took my finger on one hand and pushed it in and out of a hole I’d made with my other hand. If you are envisioning the gesture that suggests sex, you’d be right – but in my defence, mortise and tenon works much the same way. 😂. My teacher was incredibly gracious and waited until I was able to come up with the proper terminology instead of guessing at what I was trying to say. Oh I laughed!
I’m such an idiot.
If you decide to try a mortise and tenon, it’s a matter of setting up your table saw with a cross-cut sled and then repeatedly cutting a section off of each side of your cross beams. I won’t go into detail because this is a basic DIY blog and after only having made 6 tenons ever, I’m certainly in no position to teach (yet).
The concept is however that the smaller section of the tenon will tuck tightly into the mortise (hole) and give your build more strength than and simple butt joint. It also means that there are no visible fasteners on your finished product.
Give me a chance to learn more and I’ll share the how-to someday.
If you have access to, and confidence in, a router – create a chamfer along the length of your 35″ 2×2’s. I did two edges to sort of round the tops of the cross sections so the blankets will slide off easier. This isn’t at all necessary – just a “nice to have”.
To coordinate the simple blanket rack, and as an excuse to play with the school router a bit more, I also chamfered the 2×4 base pieces along the top edges:
Using the building plans above, attach your 35″ cross sections to your 34 ½” perpendiculars at 2″ from the top and the second at 15 ½” from the top.
Use wood glue and 2 ½” wood screws drilled in from the outside of the perpendiculars. Check for square
CLAMP until dry – very important here – the wood glue is carrying the brunt of the load on this build, so it’s super-important to clamp your blanket rack tightly until dry.
I traced the perpendicular legs of the blanket rack onto the centre of my 2×4 base pieces and then chiseled out a small section to rest them in.
This step isn’t necessary, but it does give your build extra strength and rigidity so it’s up to you whether you do this or just glue and screw the base 2×4’s to your legs.
Use wood glue and 2 ½” wood screws drilled up from the bottom of your blanket rack feet into the legs to hold.
Sand your simple blanket rack smooth with 180 to 220 grit sandpaper and you are ready to put it to use! (I haven’t decided on a stain yet, so this is as far as I’m going for now)
VERY simple, but very functional.
See how it stands out from the wall only about 8″? Easily tucked behind a chair or couch out of the way.
I tried to make it pretty for blog photos.
Really we have it stacked with 6 blankets (not all coordinating 😂) and it’s perfect.
I tucked it in behind our armchairs for a quick and easy grab’n go.
If the kids don’t fold them up afterwards it’s no big deal because you can just throw them over this simple blanket rack and it’s behind furniture so it doesn’t have to be perfect.
I used scrap wood for this simple blanket rack, so my grand total came to $0 – but if you were to pick up wood at your local home improvement store, it might run you about $6 CDN to build yourself.
For comparison, see how much Amazon is charging for similar items (affiliate links):
I built a second version of a blanket rack / quilt rack that I’ll show you tomorrow – similar idea, but more of a display rack option.
Have a great one!