DIY Dowel Ladder

In case you’ve missed it on Pinterest, decorative ladders are currently all the rage! 😉 I love the look and love how versatile they are for storage, so I’m all about this trend! A lot of the ladders are used for blankets (we’ve got one of those) or towels in the bathroom, but I wanted to build a ladder to hold accessories, something you could keep by your door to throw all the things you’re walking in with – keys, mail, sunglasses, purse. I also wanted the dowels to be adjustable, so it can be customized to fit different things. So we made extra holes in the sides of the outside dowels, and the smaller dowels can slide in & out to create more or less spacing between them. Then you just need some S hooks and you can hang whatever you need on your ladder! Or just use it for blankets & towels, because those always look nice too!Materials:

– 1 1/4 x 48″ wood round dowels – 2 (or more, depending on if you want to make it taller or you can buy one tall dowel and cut that to length)
– 5/8 x 48″ wood round dowels – 2-4 (amount will vary depending on the length you’d like them & how many you want in your ladder)
– drill with 5/8″ forstner bit
– miter box
– sandpaper

Directions: Cut the big dowels to length if needed. (If you get shorter dowels, you can use a dowel screw to join them together*). Cut the small dowels to length using miter box. Measure and mark where your holes will go. Drill holes. Sand dowels as needed. (You can sand the ends of the small dowels so that they slide into the holes easier).

*I liked the color of the wood for the 48″ size dowels, but wanted our ladder to be taller than that. So we bought 4 large dowels, and used dowel screws to put them together to make ours 72″ tall. They do sell dowels that are that long, however the wood color wasn’t what I was looking for, so that’s why we made ours this way.

-Manda