After a couple of months of living without a draining rack and unable to find want we wanted we decided to spend a bit of time building the draining rack of our dreams!
To save on precious worktop space we made a wall mounted, folding draining rack with removable trays to catch drips of water.
Two years on and it’s still working well, but could do with a new coat of beeswax!
As with most things in our life we looked around for materials we could recycle and re-purpose. The draining rack is made from part of an oak bench we rescued from a neighbours bonfire heap.
We had a limited number of tools for the job; we used a mitre saw and table saw for cutting the wood and carefully drilled all the holes using a cordless hand drill.
It took some patience to glue all the dowels in and clamp it up square. The job wasn’t helped by accidentally cutting all the dowels a couple of mm shorter than necessary!
For simplicity we screwed & glued the pieces together and plugged the counter-bored screw holes with leftover dowels for a seamless finish.
The draining rack is set at a slight angle, tilted up towards the wall, so that even when parked on a slope, plates don’t roll off. The two halves are held together with a couple of short lengths of jute twine – sometimes the simplest solutions are the best.
There are two removable baking trays on the underside which collect run-off drips of water, so the water can be tipped down the sink before the draining rack is folded away. We bought the cheapest and lightest baking trays we could find – needless to say they were Tesco Value!
Finally, we finished the wood with beeswax to bring out the grain and to seal and protect it from regular exposure to water. In total the draining rack only cost about £7 to make.
If you’d like to have a go at making your own and have any questions or would like some help please get in touch! 🙂
beautiful woodwork!
Such a great idea! Impressive attention to detail!!!