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Everyone entering my lounge has made comment about my stemware obsession, particularly because I had just about everything with the exception of my blue/green glasses in boxes. I’ve been looking around online for some sort of solution, but haven’t had a whole lot of success. I finally stumbled across this wire stemware rack, four feet wide and eighteen inches deep… for a lovely cost of $80. Now, I was almost ready to pay that, just because I knew it would satisfy the vast majority of my storage needs, but, ehh… I bet I could build it for less than that; you know me, I’ll build anything, lol, judging by the coffee table, side table, and tv stand previously built… and of course, the shelving for the bar.

Off to Lowes I went, basic measurements in hand, I knew I’d need 13 THIN planks, 13 square rods of some sort, and two four foot lengths of something. As long as the total cost was less than $80, preferably much less, it would work.

My first choice was pine, very cheap, and I’d have no qualm painting it, it’s just crappy pine afterall. Well, they had 3/8th inch planks, but they seemed a tad too thick for this purpose. I walked over to the poplar section, discovering that it really wouldn’t cost much more to build it out of that ‘better’ wood. They even had the square dowl rods (if you can call them that when they’re not round?) in poplar. Hmmm, but could I paint poplar…? It would be an injustice, truly, so I needed to pick up some stain too. Mmmm… ebony stain, yes, that’s the brown/black, espresso, chocolate, whatever you want to call it that my new (to be purchased) dining table is finished with… perfect.

The beauty of custom built furniture, or whatever you’d call this, is that it is designed exactly to meet my specifications, lol… I can hang two rails of martini glasses next to each other without them bumping into each other… I can hang six champagne flutes on the same rail without them bumping into each other, it’s brilliant. If all I would be hanging were champagne flutes this stemware rack would hold a whopping 72 of them! Judging by the average holding capacity of five wine glasses (much better than the TWO of my purchased racks below) I can hang 60 wine glasses! Most of my martini glasses are fairly wide, so I can fit just about three onto the rack, which kind of sucks, that’s only one better, but for the smaller bells I can fit four, which is great.

For the technically curious…

The planks that form the ‘top’ of the tee (when inverted) are made of 1/4″x2.5″ poplar, 18 inches in length . The rods that form the vertical tee portion are 5/8th’s inch square and, of course, 18 inches in length. These are joined together with three number 4 screws 1/2″ in length. To prevent cracking of this ‘hard’ wood, I drilled 1/16″ pilot holes, on top of that I have 7/64th” shank holes, and to countersink I have 1/4″ holes… so yes, folks, that’s drilling THREE holes for every screw. There are, in total, 39 of these number four screws. Trust me, one needs to drill all of these special holes or one WILL split the wood to pieces. To attach the rod to the strips at the front and back I used number six screws one inch in length. Same deal, three holes for each screw… 5/64th” pilot, 9/64th” shank, and 1/4″ countersink. Of course, if I had some dandy countersinking bit I wouldn’t have to do all that extra work, but really it took only a couple additional seconds per screw hole. There are 26 of these screws/holes to attach all of the rods to the two bars. I did a slight faux paux by attaching the rods to the bars on the same side as I’d attach the planks, and since my countersink job wasn’t the greatest, lol, some of the planks were a little wonky, but it looks fine. As always, wood glue all pieces together before drilling the pilot holes and screwing them together. This thing is going to hold a considerable dollar amount of glassware, so one doesn’t want to skimp! Oh, and the bars at the front and back are made of 1″x1.5″ poplar, that isn’t so important really, but you want something sturdy. The planks on the left and right ends are 1.5″ wide, no need to use a huge 2.5″ plank for that. Btw, all of these pieces are available conveniently at Lowes, of course the poplar comes in 24″ lengths, unlike the pine which is available in 18″ lengths. I chose to chop all pieces to 18″ because the square dowl rods are pretty damn pricey and they come in 36″ lengths… cheaper to waste the poplar planks than have lots of dowl left over.

The math to figure out spacing, as one would expect, drove my non-math-able brain a bit nutty. The mounting bars are 48″ long, you want twelve “slots” so you’ll need thirteen rails, with 11 2.5″ wide planks and 2 1.5″ planks. Subtracting the width of the two rods on the ends gives me (48″ - 5/8th - 5/8th) 46.75″, which I’ll then divide by twelve (since there are twelve slots), and that gives me a spacing for the 13 rods of 3.75 (roughly, to get more precise is practically impossible, unless you really want to measure in 32nd’s?). Mark off the hanging bars with this measurement, that gives the ‘on-center’ placement. Mark off 5/16th’s on each side of those marks and you’ll have the perfect ’slot’ for those rods. Mark off all these lines with the two bars aligned with each other and use some sort of carpenter’s square/triangle (preferably) so you are sure they are as straight as possible.

I used number six screws two inches in length to attach the rack via the front & rear bars directly into the ceiling joists… One could also use eyelets and chain, but that wouldn’t look right for my purposes. At least, lol, I THINK they’re in the joists, otherwise I’ll have some horrible crash one of these days, haha. There are nine screws holding it up, six in the front (because there will be more pressure on the front due to loading & unloading of glasses) and three in the rear.

And, you want to know the cost of this spectacular stemware holder? …Forty dollars! That includes the stain, screws, and wood. I used Minwax wipe-on poly, which I already had, and I already had all the sandpaper and crap necessary, but, really, it’s real wood, hardwood (well, it isn’t pine, lol), and it’s the exact finish as other furniture I’ll be making or buying. The rails are wide enough so that I can hold anything without dreaded clinking of the glasses together… score!