Found / Reclaimed Plank Into Coat Hooks.

Upon moving into our new house, my wife and I found a couple of old planks that were clearly from an old set of shelves tucked away in the eves.

One of the planks had some really nice markings and plates and numbers.

We have always been trying to think of something to do with these planks, and now we have.

We decided to make a coat rack for the entrance area of our house.

This instructable shows how I made these coat hooks.

I guarantee there are better ways to make this and definitely more correct ways to do it, but when I was making these the country ok the UK was in lockdown due to the COVID-19 virus and this meant that it was online shopping or what we had at hand to complete the build. I tried to do as much as I could with what I had in my workshed at the time.

So here it is. How i made my coat hooks.

Step 1: Tools and Materials.

Tools.

Hand saw. TBH any type of saw will work.
Screwdriver. Electric or manual.
Drill. for making pilot holes but not necessary if you have self-tapping wood screws.
Pen, Pencil. Some marking tool.
Straight edge. ruler, a bit of wood whatever works.
Paintbrush.

Materials.

Old plank
1 inch x 2 inch battening
Mirror mounting plates
Coat hooks.
Loads of wood screws
Clear polyurethane varnish.

There might be some other items needed that I have forgotten to list. Please read the whole instructable and make sure you have what you need if you are planning on following what I have done.

Step 2: Washing the Planks.

Using some dish soap and water I gave the plank a good clean as it was very dirty and dusty from being in our attic for god knows how long.

I left the plank in the sun to dry out fully before moving on to the next step.

Step 3: Cutting the Plank.

The plank that we found had some channels cut into it where some sort of shelf or crossbeam would have been attached in a previous life.

I worked out that if I cut the plank at these points I would get four equal lengths. I would have liked to have five, as I prefer odd numbers when designing something like this. (also I had five hooks.)

Using the hand saw I cut the plank at the channel so all the pieces will look the same and be the same length.

These four shorter planks will form the base form my coat hooks.

N.B : I will not be using and measurements in my instructable as you wont need them as you dont have my plank. so it would be pointless.

Step 4: Removing the Old Hardwear.

These planks seem to have been used for multiple things and had a lot of old screws and nails in from their previous life.

I used a nail remover, claw hammer and pliers to remove all the rusty nails and screws.

Just be safe with the rusty nails as they can be dangerous.

Step 5: Assembling the Boards Into Back Plate for Coat Hooks.

I arranged the planks into a formation with every other plank offset.

This was for two reasons. 1) Because I think it looks better and more pleasing to the eye. 2) Incase the planks are not exactly the same length this formation will hide any errors, and make it harder to spot.

Once I had the layout I wanted I fixed them together using some 1" x 2" battens.

I cut the battens slightly shorter than the width of the overall width of the four planks so that they would be harder to see when mounted on the walls.

Screwing two screws into each plank top and bottom made them very secure and made the whole structure strong.

Step 6: Placing the Hooks on the Backboard.

Placing the hooks on the newly constructed backboard was a fun task, due to the fact I had four planks five hooks and lots of details on the boards that I didn't want to cover up.

We came up with a couple of options but we finally went with the option where planks 1,2 and 3 had one hook as the had more details and the last plank had two hooks as it only had one painted number.

I screwed the hooks onto the planks, this is where I drilled pilot holes for the hook screws as I wasn't sure of the quality of the screws and didn't want to ruin the planks.

Step 7: Installing the Mounting Hardware.

I added the mirror mounting plates to the rear of the battens so they protruded slightly past the edge of the backboard so it could be screwed into the wall for final mounting.

In the second photo, you can see that I placed the mirror plates at the bottom of the battens, this was mainly because I wanted to make sure they were all in exactly the same place relative to each other and I was being very lazy and didn't have a measuring device. So this is positively something that could have been done much better.

Step 8: Finishing the Wood.

When it comes to finishing the wood, I wanted to preserve as much of the paint and damage and patina as possible.

We could have waxed it but the two metal panels would not have taken to being waxed very well, there are also some spots of what looked like tar or oil paint that I didn't want to clean off as it all added to the history of the wood and I wanted to preserve as much of that as possible.

I opted for a polyurethane varnish. I went for a mat version to keep the look of the layers of paint and rust and marks.

I took apart the backboard and varnished all the parts for one coat, once dry I re-built the whole thing minus the hooks and gave it all two more coats of the varnish, giving it a light sand between coats.