DIYing A Long Hook Rail Meant for Your Mudroom

Warning: the following project may contain subject matter that is remarkably straightforward to do, but highly satisfying. Reader discretion is advised.

We have now made two large Hands-on hook rails and each time they’ve been low on effort and high on reward. Read: these get used ALL THE TIME. The first one is in our garage (you can see it on page 216 of our second book, Lovable Livable Home) and the second is the one we are detailing for you today: this six-hook rail that we made for our beach house’s laundry/mudroom.

blue towel / black baskets / shelf brackets / gold hooks / cabinet pull / pendant / gold frame 

If you are unfamiliar with hook rails (here are some examples) they are in short a series of hooks – sometimes small for keys or larger for coats and bags – that are affixed to a board that you then hang on your wall. They fairly much earn you 4-6 spots to hang things while only putting 2-3 holes in your wall. The idea is strong, but most of them are only a couple of feet long at best, meaning the hooks can get a little cramped and crowded. And when you’ve got a big wall to fill, they might leave you wishing they were at least twice as long as their standard size.

So when we chose to add a whole lot of hanging storage to the wall in our beach house mudroom / laundry room, we knew a regular hook rail would be too puny. Sherry swiftly fell in love with these gold & marble single hooks from Target, which you saw when we first shared the laundry room makeover:

We did not truly show you that wall quite much because it was NOT the wrapped up look we had in mind. We hurriedly slapped up these three hooks around 8 months ago – simply to have something to hang coats and purses on in the winter months when we were there working – but it was fairly sad looking. We did not even level them. OH THE SHAME!

The straightforward answer is simply to add more hooks, right? Well, two issues with that. First, I consistently prefer for hooks to go into studs. Anchors are a good back-up, but in a spot like this where I could foresee a kid trying to yank down a towel or a guest throwing a heavy beach bag up there – I feared them pulling out of the wall. But placing hooks only at studs means they could end up looking random and off-center – and we certainly could not get as many hooks as we were hoping for if they had to be spaced 16″ apart.

Second issue is that a wall this big felt like it could use some visual anchoring too. Some additional element to break up the space and visually organize the hooks on that big wall. The solution to both issues was adding the rail. In this case, our rail was simply a 1×4″ primed board that spanned the whole distance, from door trim to built-in cabinet.

It in fact has the same profile as the door molding, which helps it make sense aesthetically, and by attaching it securely into the studs in four places across that span (with pleasant long screws) we could now hang our hooks ANYWHERE that we hoped on the wall in whatever spacing we deemed best and know they’d be especially secure.

When it comes to pointers for the rail-hanging process: simply make sure it is level and use a stud finder to ensure that you are hitting your studs. After it was hung, we spackled over the screw heads (make sure you counter sink them so you can hide them later) and then we painted the whole thing to match the wall.

My other hanging pointer is when you are attaching hooks that only hang on one screw, add some caulk to the back of each one to discourage it from spinning. This makes ALL THE DIFFERENCE.

Before we did this, the hooks had a tendency to twist to the side when we took things off of them, but now the caulk acts as a light-duty adhesive to keep them in place. We still want to be able to remove them without causing damage to the rail, which is why we did not use an actual adhesive – but it does the trick to keep them from spinning and everything feels pleasant and sturdy.

So here is what the wrapped up project looks like, including the dark pull that we brought in to the cabinet to match the iron shelf brackets. Like I said at the start, this hook rail project is not complicated or fancy, but it adds a ton of function to a wall without much effort, time, or money. Plus, this formula allows you to hang whatever hooks you want on whatever type of rail you’d like – you could even add a shelf over it if you are looking for more vertical storage.

It is hard to tell in the far away shots, but the reason Sherry fell for these hooks is they’ve got a little inset piece of marble. Even that listing on Target’s website does these a disservice, so I tried to capture the shiny stone element that they add to the room in this photo. I’d say I half-succeeded.

We wrapped up this a few weeks ago and, although you see fairly light stuff hung in these pics, they’ve since been piled high with packed beach bags, coolers, two of our beach floats, and even our beach umbrellas (we hang two on one hook!). They are workhorses.

And in the winter they’ll be ideal for our coats, purses, hats, and jackets. Do not get me began on the mess we had last year with four of us trying to share three hooks.

If you are looking for more straightforward organization ideas, these projects might assist. And none of them are quite difficult:

• Four Ways We Organized Our Shed
• Maximizing Storage In A Pantry Closet
• How We Organized Our Kitchen Cabinets
• Adding Hidden Shoe Storage To The Wall

Or you can view all the posts we have ever written about organizing. That is a lively little rabbit hole to fall into.

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