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DIY Hang It Up!: A Hook Hanging How-To

Do you love hanging things on hooks? I find it very convenient so here is my hook hanging how-to!

I hope everyone had a great weekend! We are on spring break here and enjoyed an amazingly rare warm day full of beautiful clear skies and sunshine… my boys loved all the outside playtime! It was a little glimpse of spring and summer to come and it was fantastic!

I am back today with a How-To on hanging hooks. It goes without saying that hooks are fabulous. Amazing. The best thing invented since corn tortillas. I love having them in the laundry/mud room for obvious reasons; they corral all of our stuff (coats, purses, backpacks) on a daily basis. But with our laundry/mud room revamp we decided we needed to add a little space for key hooks to eliminate those last minute stressed out key searches on our way out the door.

Hook How To’s

When thinking about installing some hooks for keys we wanted to create something fun that could double as “art” in the laundry/mud room. After tossing around a few ideas we remembered the vintage wooden oar that I have been hoarding in my furnace closet for months now. The solution was clear… and I must say that I am thrilled with this new purpose for it! An upcycled oar to key holder!

Upcycled Vintage Oar Turned Key Holder graphic.

I have a few little tips if you want to undertake a similar type of DIY project.

  • First, attach your hooks to your oar/board before you attach the oar/board to the wall. Lay it on a flat surface, figure out the placement of the hooks and attach them.
  • Now you are ready to move on to hanging your oar. After tinkering around with different ideas about how to actually attach the oar to the wall, we decided to just screw right through it in two places. Start by pre-drilling a hole where you want to attach it to the wall (ideally into some studs).
  • Next hold the oar (you will likely need some help) and make sure it is level. Use a drill and appropriately sized screws to attach the oar to the wall through your predrilled holes. If you aren’t drilling into studs you may want to use drywall anchors.

Krista centering the wooden hook holder.Using a screw gun.

  •  Finally, in order to cover the screw heads we used some filler, let it dry, sanded it smooth, and then touched it up with the original craft paint I had used to paint the vintage oar.

Touching Up the Oar with spackle.

 

I love giving beautiful old objects new purpose. And now, for some more serious hooky storage solutions, we needed some heavy duty coat hooks. Here is how we attached them:

Arrows pointing to the black hooks.

Hanging coat hooks may seem pretty straight forward but I have a few important tips to share with you so that all of your belongings don’t end up on a pile on the floor (because the coats hooks end up on the floor).

1) Think about what you are attaching them to

  • I recommend that you put hooks either directly into a stud or onto a board of some kind and then attach the board to the studs. You never know quite how much weight may be in those purses and backpacks (or what two year old may try to hang off the hooks…), so you want to be sure that your hooks are nice and securely attached. Based on some previous experiences I don’t have a whole lotta trust for drywall anchors). We felt secure because we were attaching our hooks directly into the paneling boards.

2) Make them EVEN and LEVEL

  • Premeasure your space and do some math. Make little marks where you want your hooks to hang, spacing them evenly apart. Also use a level to ensure they are straight. We got to skip the LEVEL step because we were able to line our hooks up with the top lip of our paneling edge.

A yellow coat and bags hanging on the hooks by the front door.

 

Ahhh… a sigh of relief. I must say it was hard to live without any hooks on our wall during our little laundry/mud room renovation. Where were we supposed to put all our stuff when we got home? I highly recommend hooks – if you don’t have any in your family entrance area, seriously consider it:)  It will change your life (or at least make it run a little more smoothly).

Hang It Up A Hook Hanging How-To poster.

I know that it has been a little while since I wrote about the Laundry Room Revamp. It is 95% done… I have two more super quick jobs to do (white washing those shadow boxes you see above the hooks and crafting up a no-sew curtain) but I have been putting them off. I guess I got a little distracted with my spring decorating. Oh, and I have some more of that to show you too…

Hmmm. Perhaps sticking to one job at a time isn’t my strength.

Thanks for stopping by, remember I love your comments! Have you had experience hanging hooks before? Anything funny happen? Or interesting tips to share?

And remember, my housie friends, HOME wasn’t built in a day. Enjoy the journey!

 

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Sincerely, Paula

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17 Comments

  1. Found this old post, seeing if maybe you will respond. How high are your two rows of hooks that are on the paneling? Considering doing 2 rows to have a child height too and trying to figure out ideal row heights. Thanks!

    1. Hi Katie,
      We don’t live in that house anymore so I can’t measure it, but one tip I would give is to perhaps stagger the upper and lower hooks. We found, after years of living with that system, that things hanging on the upper hooks often covered the lower hooks. If they’d been staggered then there would have been a gap between so you could always easily access things on the lower hooks. Hope that helps!
      Krista

    1. Hi Debra! We bought those double coat hooks at Home Depot – I think they were around $5 – $7 each… I can’t remember exactly. We like them so much that we actually have them at three different spots throughout the house!!

    1. Hi Christine!! Thanks! I wish I could… it was a pretty fun room to “do”. Now after seeing your beautiful entrance I think mine truly needs some serious work:) Thanks for your visit!!
      Krista

    1. I know Melissa, so does ours… at least all our paperwork. I have a command center closet in the works right now to try to fix that problem. Thanks for popping by!!
      Krista

  2. I admit, I’m slightly depressed that I found your website (via Cape27), because it’s beautiful. I love the mudroom/drop zone/laundry room. I don’t have a drop zone. You walk directly from the garage straight smack into the middle of the kitchen. I dream of a drop zone like this! It looks so good. I love the oar idea. I’ve got a beach color scheme/theme going in my main living area. Maybe I can find a mini oar and a place to hang it.

    I came over because I saw your comment about rain gutter bookshelves?? I’m very curious but didn’t find them on your site. Can you direct me to a post if you have one?

    Thanks,
    Andrea (your newest subscriber 🙂

    1. Hi Andrea,
      Thanks for popping by! I will definitely hop over and check out your blog! I love our mud room/drop zone too. So great with kids…

      I don’t have a tutorial yet on the rain gutter bookshelves… I should do one soon because I have some tips for others based on the mistakes we made with them!! I put them up long before I started blogging, but I do have some pictures and could take some more. I will write about this soon (I promise:) but until then you could google “rain gutter bookshelves”. I checked out lots of images online before we put ours up.

      Krista

    1. Striped Rug picked up at Home Sense for $12. I think Home Sense might be my favourite store. Is it in the US??
      Thanks for reading Danielle!
      Krista

    1. Hooks are a lifesaver! I love them… this is the first house we have had with a garage and it is such a treat to come in from the garage and hang our stuff up directly on our hooks. I don’t know if I could be back now… I think that is my fourth vintage oar now. Too many??
      Krista

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