Painted Chevron Coat Hanger

One thing our home doesn't have that I constantly wish it did is a mud room. Oh, to be able to freely fling snowy/salty boots, heavy coats and scarves into their own happy home next to our main entry. The good thing about our house is that I've seen plenty of other homes in the neighborhood similar to ours that look like they've built mudrooms of their own to the side of the house. This is something we can do in the future, but for now, we simply rely on a wooden coat hook that the previous owners hung on the wall by our side entrance, on the landing leading down to the basement (or to our kitchen, on the left).

The coat hook serves its purpose, to hold coats and jackets.. But it was fairly plain-looking and, well, just not very "fun." I know, I know - "Coat hooks are supposed to be fun??" Well, in my world they are. Everything must be fun, cute and different. Varnished, simple woodgrain doesn't last long in our house.

So, we took the simple plank of wood, sanded all the shiny varnish off, and removed the hooks. Then, I got to work.

Because I'm still not over the whole chevron pattern craze, I decided to paint the coat-hook board a multi-colored chevron. I wanted it to look hand-painted (read: a little imperfect), but the zig zags still needed to be somewhat straight, so I went ahead and measured every three inches to begin a new zig-zag. Then a tick-mark was made halfway between each three-inch space to signify where the peak of each zig-zag should be. 

From there, I just started painting. Using standard acrylic paint that I already have on hand, I went zig-zag crazy. This project took longer than I initially thought it would, because I waited to let each color (each zig-zag) dry before moving on to the next adjacent color. Then, I went over every color with a second coat of paint. The top and bottom of the board were painted plain ol' white.


Eric put the hooks back on and drill the prettified coat hook back to the wall in its proper place.

I really would've liked to both spray paint the hooks white and apply a clear coat sealant on the board after painting, just to seal the paint and give it a shiny finish, but the spray paint and clear coat give off some pretty noxious fumes and I didn't feel like standing out in the cold garage to apply a couple coats of each. So for now, it's bare. If I remember this spring, I'll apply the spray paint and clear coat in a temperature that won't freeze my tootsies off.

I apologize for the blurry photos, but our little landing doesn't have the greatest light, and I was trying to balance on some stairs while taking the pictures.

Here, you can see where the hook hangs above the stairs leading to our basement.

It's a simple little update, but it gives our brokeass excuse for a mudroom a little character, and dresses up the "just for now" bare white walls.

Here's to making simple, hum-drum pieces around the house fun and bright!