Tips on how to make a DIY Wood Hanging Glass Rack.

We have a small wet bar area with a built in cabinet, but no shelves. Making a Wine Glass Rack was a DIY no-brainer for us. Nick saw a wood wine glass rack in our latest ‘This Old Home‘ magazine edition, it sold for $99 plus shipping and tax. Nice, but too expensive for us.

The shelf in the magazine looked pretty much like our DIY shelf that cost us a total of $30 for the supplies, glass racks and brackets, we had the stain, poly and screws on hand. Wood is pretty expensive these days, you’ll know if you’ve been to a lumber yard lately.

Instead of using a big slab of wood, you could also use salvaged barn wood or pallet wood to keep costs low. Take a look at our pallet furniture article for inspiration. Lucky for us Nick’s parents live next to a wood mill run by Amish people in Northern Minnesota. They had these lovely Red Oak planks cut for us, one is for the DIY glass shelf and the long board is for our new fireplace mantle.

Freshly Milled Red Oak Boards

We met Nick’s parents, Pete & Sue, his Brother Joe and extended family in Kansas over Thanksgiving where we received the wood boards and started working on them. Joe gave us lots of great advice, he’s a professional carpenter, and let us use his sanding tools which saved us a ton of time.

Joe and Silke sanding a Red Oak board

Getting back to the Wine Rack… once we arrived home again we cleaned the oak plank with a Tack cloth to remove any dirt and sanding fines. Then we applied a coat of dark brown stain with a clean cloth, an old sock works great. We also applied a coat of Varathane Triple Thick Polyurethane in Satin with a regular brush to seal the wood. The sealer will help to keep the bark attached to the board as well.

Silke is staining the wood for our Hanging Glass Rack

Once the board dried Nick pre-drilled holes to attach the wine glass racks. We found the glass racks we used at the IKEA store in St. Louis for only $4.99 each. I’m not too crazy about the white coating on the glass racks and will probably spray paint them later on to get them to blend in a little nicer. What do you think?

You can find similar Glass Hanging Racks on Amazon starting at under $10 for your own shelving project.

You could also make your own racks using wood strips or t-molding like shown in this video DIY Wine Glass Display Racks by Joe Truini on the ‘Today’s Homeowner’ website.

Nick is pre-drilling the holes for the glass hanging rack

The next step was to hang our shelf. We used a stud finder (it went off every time Nick held it, lol) to make sure our 20+ pound wood shelf would stay secure. To attach the shelf we used heavy duty brackets and screwed them straight into the studs. We couldn’t find black screws so I covered the screw heads in the brackets with black nail polish.

After the brackets were secured to the wall Nick once again pre-drilled holes in the wood. He then attached the board to the brackets from underneath using smaller screws. All that was left now was to arrange our favorite collection of glasses for display.

This wooden hanging glasses shelf turned out to be a great focal point for our little wet bar. It holds our wine, beer and liquor glass collection beautifully. I love the way the bark is still attached to this thick slab of wood.

By the way, I did remove the hanging glass holders and painted them using a metallic spray paint. It blends in much nicer now.

What do you think of our DIY Wood Glass Rack? Have we inspired you? Leave us a comment below.