Our present home has a terrace. A huge improvement from our very first apartment! Now we can enjoy being outside whenever we like, and we like it a lot.
One thing, though, is the wind. I never suspected it could get so windy! One day I had to hunt fro clothes all around the building: the strong wind blew them away, pins and all! Our plastic clothes hanger could not handle such a wind, so we had to find a workaround to hang clothes outside. It was too good to hang anything soaked wet and come just a couple of hours later to find everything dry.
Well, to solve this problem my clever engineer husband partnered with my metal-worker father: together, they built a sturdy steel clothes hanger for outdoor. The cleverest part? It’s strongly fixed to the cement wall and can be folded to close it, so you don’t have it in your way and can enjoy your outdoor activities. Plus, you can open in at different heights!
Moreover, my husband and father didn’t stop here. Locutus always hated the indoor clothes hanger, he found it always in the middle of the way, especially when we lived in our smaller house. Moving to a bigger home didn’t solve the problem: the hanger we used in wet days was first an annoyance in our baby’s bedroom, then in the study where we work.
So, my husband and father also planned and made a steel clothes hanger for indoor use. They crafted a metal hanger with slides that comes out of the wardrobe and, when not in use, fully disappears inside. It takes a small space under a shelf, it saves loads of space in the room.
Let’s discover how my two men got the jobs done!
Click for the finished project detailed photos
How we made the foldable clothes hanger for the terrace
First, my husband measured the wall that had to host the hanger, decided the space between each bar and planned the open/close method: not just with hinges but also with reinforcement bars to keep the hanger in place and hooks to keep it closed against the wall.
My father had the right tools for the job in his workshop, so all the work began there.
Step one: cutting the metal bars to size. Trying the cutting machine was loads of fun for Locutus! All the bars placed on a counter in the right position, they began welding bars and hinges.
The hardest part was checking that everything was flat and in the right place, all the angles between bars equal. Steel plated on each side connected the bars. Each bar is hollow on the inside to allow the opening mechanism to work. They also welded two bigger bars with a hinge mechanism: those had to close on the wall and open when needed to secure the hanger open for clothes.
Described like this, it seems an easy straightforward task. Believe me, it wasn’t. The first phase was full of trials, samples, rethinking, measuring… We even used the forklift to check that the hanger was flat enough and to decide its final height on the wall.
The final step was mounting the hanger on the wall.
We screwed the hinges on one side to the wall, at a height that was both comfortable to hang clothes and where long gowns or bedsheets would not touch the floor. Since I’m the shortest in the family, I was the tester: if I could use the hanger, anyone could!
Next, the bars to put it to use. We added two long metal tubes, each on one side: the bottom of each bar was hinged to the wall, free to move, the top had a rod that could fit inside the holes on the hanger to keep it in use position. While the bars are not needed, we can simply use a catch on the wall to keep them out of the way.
Installing those bars was not as easy as I told… We had to measure their position carefully: they need to be close enough to the hanger to be able to fit the positioning bars in the holes, and also need to have their hinge high enough to have room to position the hanger at different angles. Those are the cases when you feel lucky to have an engineer husband!
How we made the extractable clothes hanger for the wardrobe
Happy with how practical our outdoor hanger is, my husband longed for a good solution for indoor use.
He never liked having clothes drying around. And, usually, we never closed the portable hanger when it was empty: storing it away for a few days then having to take it out again was more annoying than keeping it empty in a corner. Not a good item to see around, I agree.
The solution was an extractable hanger that could come out of a wardrobe when needed.
In our spare bedroom we have a bridge wardrobe: Locutus designed a hanger similar to the steel one outside, that (instead of hinges) had drawer slides to extract it from the wardrobe. When not in use, you can simply hide it behind a shutter. When you need it, you pull it out and hang your clothes. Genius!
This time, the metal tubes that made the structure of the hanger were filled with wooden plugs: we needed them as a support to screw the bars to the slides.
Just to be sure, we selected drawer slides that could support a lot of weight (I mean, a lot!). Mounting them inside the wardrobe was not so easy. Also the making of the hanger had to be super precise: we carefully measured the available space and the space needed for the slides, because a centimeter could make the difference.
To support the slides, we added wooden reinforcements inside the wardrobe, so the hanger was free to pass through the shutters. We had to take into account the shutters thickness and its hinges as well.
In the end, the result was quite strong! We placed a shelf on top of it to maximize the use of the inner space in the wardrobe and the hanger was ready.
My husband is always looking for ways to improve our home, maximize the use of what we have, add comfort, ease our lives.
What do you think of those two home projects he designed?
