Built-in Laundry Drying Rack

I was tired of setting up my old, broken drying rack and putting it away; I wanted something more convenient and more functional. I use the rack pretty much every time I do laundry, since I air-dry my heavy socks and any shirts/pants with technical wicking fabrics. Plus, after I started this blog, I got a lot of questions about what my next project was going to be. ;-) So I decided to build a drying rack for my laundry area.

Laundry area before drying rack

and another "before" view

I bought pine 1x2s at Home Depot and cut them to size with a miter saw. Considering I painted the whole damn thing anyway, I might choose mdf if I were to make this again...

I may not use the drill press all that much, but when I use it, it saves so much time and effort. These are holes for where the rack pieces will go. 

And here are the rack pieces, salvaged from my old drying rack. 

It was hard for me to figure out how to do the corner joints, considering the small stock size. I eventually ended up doing mitered corners with diagonal biscuits. 

I did dadoes for the middle element. This is a dry run to see how things shaped up. I painted the wooden elements before gluing them together, figuring it would be a total pain to paint around the rails. 

All painted, being glued up. The biscuits were wider than the wooden pieces, so I ended up chiseling off the excess and touching up the paint. With all my work with power tools, I've been pretty lucky not to injure myself; however, I totally gouged my hand with the chisel. Deep cut, had to lie down after dressing it.

The rack is in place! there are hinges on the bottom / back side, and the top is being held in place with those magnetic / spring catches you see on cabinets sometimes. It seemed like a great idea -- until the magnets stopped holding the rack up, and it completely bonked me on the head. I'm not sure why the magnets held the rack originally and then failed, but fail they did and they never held the rack up successfully again.

The rack, fully loaded. I like that I can hang hangers across the front, too; I used to hang those on my shower (which didn't have nearly as much real estate as this). This is as full as it would ever get: post-Utah laundry. It worked great! Easier to hang stuff on (no bending down to the floor or walking around the rack), and easier to remove stuff, too.

After the first drying load had been removed, there were still improvements to be done. You can see that the magnetic catches have been replaced with window sash locks -- much more reliable (if not as cool). Also, it may be hard to tell from this pic, but the support on this side of the rack is not very stable or attractive. So I replaced it with...

… a chain -- which I was planning to use for both sides originally. The other side worked better with a block, due to the distance from the wall. 

The chain when the rack is closed. 

Finished rack, with the mistakes all spackled and paint touched up, plus the block on the right has been painted to match the wall. 

and, finished rack in the open position