How to make shoe rack like tower

We know shoes take up a lot of space, so a shoe rack is necessary. Today I will teach you how to make shoe tower-a free standing, multi-tier floating shoe rack.

This design is easily expandable and the strength of the steel bars I’ve used to support the shoes means it could easily be extended to house 3 pairs of shoes side by side. It would also be easy to build one which extended up higher to accommodate more shoes than I have.

I’ve entered this into the Homemade Christmas competition as I think it’d be a great gift for any of the disorganised people in your life.

step 1 Gather tools and materials
Here’s a list of tools and materials that you’ll need to complete this project.

Tools:
screw driver
tennon saw
hacksaw
carpenters square
some clamps
pencil
pretractor
drill with 3mm and 5mm bits
a scrap of sandpaper

Materials:

1 2100 x 70 x 18mm planed timber
3 1m lengths of 4mm threaded steel
6 1.25″ x 8 screws
18 4mm nuts

step 2 Marking and cutting the wood
Picture 2 shows the dimensions of the pieces you will need to end up with.

Draw a line perpendicular to the edge, 600mm from one end of the timber. From this draw a line 15 degrees from the vertical (pic 3), this will give the slant on the shoe tower so it doesn’t just fall over forwards. You will need two of these 600mm long bits, with a 15 degree wedge cut of the end of each. They will form the uprights of the shoe tower.

For the feet of the tower, 2 250mm long pieces of wood are required, with the same 15 degree wedge cut out of the end of each. Picture 3 shoes one of the feet drawn onto the wood. Cut along the slanting line then measure 250mm from the pointed end remaining to find the line to be drawn for the next cut.

Once all the pieces have been cut to size, sand off any lightly splintered edges with some medium grade sand paper. I used 120 grit and used the pieces as sanding blocks as I couldn’t find mine!

step 3 Marking and drilling holes
It is important that you mark and drill holes in the correct positions, otherwise your shoes won’t lie flat when in their spaces. For trainers the steel bars should be on corners of a rectangle 70mm x 40mm. Flip-flops need the same width of rectangle but only 25mm high. Pumps or other girly shoes I don’t own would need slots somewhere in between these heights.

The diagram in picture 1 should illustrate this well. Picture 2 is the same diagram rotated to give a better impression of how the finished stand should look.

I used a scorer (correct name please?) to mark a faint line which left a 40mm seperation between the holes once marked, then marked along these lines the positions of the holes.

There are further pictures to illustrate the process I undertook to mark and drill the holes. The 5mm holes are where the threaded steel rods are slid through, the 3mm holes are pilot holes to allow you to screw the feet of the stand to the inside of the uprights. The 3mm holes go all the way through the feet and part way through the uprights.

step 4 Assembly of wooden parts
Screw the feet to the uprights so that the feet are on the inside and the screws go from the inside, through the feet and into the uprights.

A neat trick the align them well once you’ve drilled the pilot holes is to start screwing the screws into the feet until the tips of the screws start poking out the other side, these can then be slotted into the pilot holes in the uprights and driven home with a few final turns.

step 5 Marking, cutting and preparing the steel rods
Mark your threaded steel rods so that you cut them into lengths 330mm long. I found a Sharpie was best for this.

Clamp against something solid to stop them rolling around then chop them up with a hacksaw. You’ll need 9 lengths for a stand 4 tiers high (4 pairs plus a brace across the back of the legs). Careful on this part, go slow and steady and you won’t end up with the end of your rods mangles, this could make threading the nuts onto them harder.

Grab your nuts (no not those you dirty bugger) and thread one onto the end of each of the threaded rods until they’re about 30mm from the end. These are the nuts to hold the two wooden frames apart.

step 6 Final assembly
Slot one of each of the rods into the holes on one side of the wooden frame. Add a nut to the end of the rod on the other side and do up the nut on the inside tight so that there is very little thread poking out on the outside.

Lay the frame flat on the floor and drop the second part of the frame on top. Screw the final nuts down on top and screw the inside ones for that side up to meet the frame.

Tighten up all the nuts with a spanner to stop them coming undone and stand it up the right way.

step 7 The finished shoe tower
Load up your shoe tower with shoes and sit back and enjoy your new lack of a shoe pile.

Thanks to the people that took inspiration from my ible and made their own. Pictures below!