Ikea Wine Rack

This was a quick and dirty project on one of my rare days off. My paying woodworking plans got put on the back burner, so my girlfriend said she’d like a wine rack for the closet. Cognizant of the fact that I need to make my woodworking seem mutually advantageous for a serene household, I dutifully ran off to an orange big box store and purchased a bunch of dimensioned poplar at the same price I pay for rough QSWO in San Jose. Ugh! Anyhoo, I returned and drew this little gem up in AutoCAD and proceeded to make sawdust. Unfortunately, the lengths didn’t work out, so I have enough poplar left over to make drawers until the carpenters come home. The good news is that when I was done, I brought it into the living room and my girlfriends spouted compliments effusively. Her sarcastic girlfriend even loved it. My girlfriend said it should be on display in the living room, while I protested that it was built in a day to hide in a closet. The term “Ikea Special” came to mind. I found that I can really benefit from one of those dado/kerf things that treeman made. I had to unmercifully pound my shelves into their respective dadoes, even after a test cut/fitting. Even though it was supposedly made symmetrical, I had to custom cut all of the cross pieces, then custom cut them to intersect (half-lap?). We’ll see where it finally comes to rest. I’ve got a lot more important things to take up wall space than this. Besides, wine should be kept cool in a dark place like the downstairs closet.

P.S. It’s purposefully unfinished. If you think that the diagonal pieces are jutting out from the case, your eyes aren’t fooling you. I bought 1×10 for the case and .75×11.25 for the cross pieces on purpose to give the case a bit more visual interest than your average pine wine rack you see at your local winery (besides, I didn’t want to pay for 11.25” and cut it down to 9.5”). I calculated that it holds 54 wine bottles.

-- You can't control the wind, but you can trim your sails