DIY Laundry Drying Rack (Wall Mount from Floor Standing)

Many a days I'm asked "Oh that's cool...where did you get that idea? Pinterest?" Yeah yeah yeah, I got it inspired from Pinterest, okay...what's it to ya?  But I got news for you today...I didn't get this DIY drying rack idea one from Pinterest.  No ma'am!  I actually had a moment of pure genius last week and thought this one up all.by.myself. 

If you've been following recently, you know I'm in the midst of making over my laundry room.  I'm on a tight budget and working in an even tighter space.  One of the items on my 'must have' list was a wall mounted drying rack.  With a $100 budget I was definitely going to DIY it, I just had to figure out how.

In our old house we had an actual laundry 'room'.  It wasn't pretty, but at least there was room for a foldable floor standing drying rack.  Our current laundry closet is extremely limited on space and I'm forced to hang all of my unmetionables all over the door knobs on the second floor.   Anyway, we've been storing that foldable laundry rack for years and the other day it caught my eye...it almost had a little glow around it like "TAKE ME!!! I AM THE ANSWER TO YOUR DRYING PROBLEMS".  And so...I did.

Looking closely at the drying rack it's actually just a bunch of dowels stuck into these and thin pieces of wood that make up the collapsible sides.   I knew I wanted to keep the top - with four rows of hanging racks - in tact so I started disassembling it one section at a time from the bottom. 

To disassemble, I turned the rack on its side and carefully pulled one dowel at a time out from the sides.   I ended up taking out one complete 'x' from the bottom and all the dowels connected to it.  I have marked the legs in red to remove and the dowels in green.

When I was done removing the pieces marked above, I had only one full 'X' of legs (still in tact) plus two additional pieces (no longer 'x'd') hanging below them.   My drying rack looked like this.

This is all very difficult to describe so I am hoping the pictures help demonstrate. 

In the photo above, you can see four 'legs'.  When the drying rack is turned on it's side with the four-dowel top piece perpendicular to the floor, the back legs will fold down and be parallel to the wall for mounting.

The two front legs will actually be cut down where the arrows indicate in the photo below.  It's important not to remove these pieces by hand.  If you do, the dowels will be too loose.

I used a jigsaw to cut the pieces and then wood glue and a clamp to keep them in place while they dried.  See that little short piece on the right? That's the piece that I cut down. It was hanging down, but I glued it to it's neighbor buddy to keep it secure.

Now you're ready to mount the drying rack on the wall.

Driving a screw through the back legs seems like the logical thing to do.  However, the piece of wood is so narrow I was afraid it would split.  Instead, I used plumbers tape to hold the wall mounted drying rack in place.

I screwed a hole through one side and then used pliers to bend it taunt around the leg of the rack before putting the other screw in.  This actually held the drying rack very tightly.  It's easier if you have another set of hands helping to hold it up while you're trying to do all this.   Make sure it's level on the wall or the top part with the four dowels (which is now the side) won't be able to clasp closed

 Now you can see I can easily pull my laundry drying rack out when I need to dry my delicates...

 ...and simply fold it up against the wall when it's not in use.
 

 

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