At any given time, there will be a sea of cups sitting on the counter next to my sink.  I swear I just get them in the dishwasher, turn around and there are more already!   With summer coming, I know that is just going to get worse.  In the past, I’ve resorted to buying stacks and stacks of paper cups, but that is so unfriendly to the environment!  Here is my new – greener – solution; a family coaster!

Supplies needed:

Tiles or coasters (one for each family member)

A board

Paint

Rubber feet

Heavy duty adhesive like Gorilla Glue or E6000

Stickers (optional)

I bought these tiles at Home Depot for $ .19 each.  There were more expensive ones, but there were also even cheaper ones.  You could also use coasters.  Once you have your tiles picked out, lay them out with a space between them and measure to determine how long your board needs to be.

You can buy a board from any home improvement store; just go with whatever is cheapest.  They should cut it for you if you need them to.  Or, look in the aisle of the lumber section – or sometimes up front near the entry – they will often have a metal cart full of board ends that they sell for cheap.

For me, I looked through my stash of boards in my garage and found this piece of trim that we ripped out in a remodel and decided to use the back of it; I liked how it had the ridges.

Sand your board down if you need to, then paint the whole thing front and back and let it dry.

If you don’t want it distressed, I would put two coats.  I like mine roughed up, so I did one heavy coat, then distressed it with a sanding block.

Now, I brushed the top and sides with stain, making sure to get it down in the ridges.

Using a rag, wipe it back off until you like the look of it.  I like to leave a little more stain down in any nicks or ridges.

This is just so you can see the difference; stained on the left, not yet stained on the right.

Let that stain dry well.  In the meantime, wash the tiles with some window cleaner and get them ready to adhere to the board.

I chose to embellish my tiles with numbers (1-5) so I just used a vinyl sticker on the corner.  You could do initials, too.  I think cork coasters with stamped numbers or letters would be super cute.

Once the stain is dry, you can spray the whole board with a craft fixative if you want, just to make it a little water resistant.

Now you will adhere the tiles to the board.  I didn’t get  a photo of this step, but I know you can figure it out 😉   Since I have an odd number of tiles, I put a little mark at the center of my board and started by gluing down the middle tile centered right on the mark, then eyeballed the others out from that.

I used Gorilla Glue, but it takes some getting used to since it foams up as it dries.  If you use too much, it will foam out from under the tiles (ummm…not that I know that from experience…).  If you are nervous about that, I would recommend E6000.  Either of them should be heavy duty enough for this project.

Let those dry overnight.

Now, put rubber feet on the bottom.  There are dozens of options available at home improvement stores, craft stores or even Walmart, so look for what works for you.  These are little clear rubber sticky dots that they sell to put inside your cabinet door to cushion the slam.

Now you have a family coaster to keep right by your sink.  The rule in our house is that everyone gets one glass per day and it must be on your assigned tile.  Works great!

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No matter how many times I straighten them up, my shoes always look like this again within a week:

Not so good.  As I was pulling out all my summer shoes and stowing away the boots this week, I thought, “I have got to do something about this!”  There are many different DIY shoe storage solutions around the internet, and I decided to put together several different ones to make a custom system that fits my needs in my closet.  I’m going to walk you through what I did and you can take the parts of it that fit your situation.

There are many ways to dress up the ideas here and make them look pretty if you are blessed to have that kind of closet.  I don’t.  My closet is tiny and is only cute when the curtain that covers it is closed, so I was going for 2 things with this project: high function, no cost.  I didn’t spend a penny; I just used things I already had around the house, but if you do end up having to purchase the materials, none of them were expensive.

I ended up dividing my shoes into 3 different parts: dressier heels, flip flops and flats, and other.

Let’s start with the heels.

Actual crown moulding would work great for this, but since I didn’t want to spend any money, I headed out to the scrap wood pile to see what I could find.  I found this moulding and I had my son hold it up against the wall for me – upside down with the wide flat part up- while I tried hanging my shoes on it to see if they would stay.  They did, but I thought that they stayed on better when I also turned it backwards, with the right side facing the wall, so that it was sitting at an angle.

Cut the moulding to the length you need, then have someone hold it in place for you while you determine where on the wall you want to put it.  Hang a couple of shoes off of it, and make sure you like the placement, leaving plenty of clearance for the shoes both above and below.

Once you like where it is, use a level to make sure it is straight,

then draw a line along the bottom edge (see how I’m holding the moulding with the unfinished side towards me, and the thin top on the bottom).

You are going to be putting screws through the thinner edge of the moulding to attach it to the wall.  Carefully drill pilot holes so that you don’t split the wood.

Hold the moulding back into place (checking to make sure it’s level) and mark the placement of the holes with a pencil – or have someone drill through the holes into the wall behind while you hold the moulding firmly in place.

If you are drilling into hard wood or into a stud, you can now just screw the moulding right into place.  If you are drilling into drywall, you should use wall anchors, then screw into those.

This is what it looks like when it’s all done with the shoes hanging on it.  Notice how the moulding sits at an angle, since the angled face of it is against the wall.

If you’re concerned with the look of it, paint the moulding a fun color.  Make sure to countersink the screws, cover them in wood putty or spackle, and touch up paint them when it dries.

And all of them done:

Now let’s do the flip flops and flats:

You will want to buy, beg or find enough wire hangers for how many shoes you want to hang from them.

If you have a choice between really heavy hangers and thinner ones, I would take the thinner ones because they are easier to bend, but it’s not a huge deal either way.

Start by cutting each hanger off at the corners with a pair of wire cutters.

Then, using your hands -or needle nosed pliers if you need to- bend the remaining part of the hanger into a shape like this:

Using the pliers, curl each end in on itself so that you don’t get poked or cut on the cut end of the hanger.

I hung my shoes on as is, but if you want to pretty them up you could make a little decorative sleeve to slip down over the top out of paper or fabric.

You could hang them on a tension rod (less than $5 at Walmart) but in keeping with my “no money” theme, I decided to use a piece of PVC pipe from the garage, mounted on L brackets.

Cut the PVC with a hacksaw to the length of wherever you are putting it, minus however much width the brackets will add (for me it was like 1/4 inch.)  Insert the L brackets into the ends of the PVC pipe and make sure it fits in the space (a little looser is better than too tight) and decide how high you want to hang it.  I put mine in my closet near the floor, under my skirts and dresses.

Hold the first bracket as straight as you can and mark the holes with a pencil.

Pre drill holes (or insert wall anchors) then screw the bracket firmly to the wall.  Now insert the other bracket into one end of the PVC, and slip the other end onto the bracket that is attached to the wall.  Hold the other bracket up straight, mark, drill and attach just like with the first side.

Here is is all finished.

I spray painted the brackets and the PVC to make is look a little nicer.

When I started to hang my shoes, some of them touched the floor, so I just bent the “shoulders” of my hanger up a little and it was perfect.

Also, I found that I liked this shape a little better for hanging flats on.

Here is what it looks like:

Now, everything else:

Now I was left with a pile of miscellaneous shoes, but there were too many to just pile on the shelf.  I was thinking that maybe I should break my “spend no money” motto and just go buy a wire shelf to double my remaining space, when I decided to have one more look around the garage, and  saw the PVC pipe and decided to make a shelf instead.

Cut and assemble PVC pipe and joiners into the shape below (you’ll need 2 of these, so 2 long pieces, 4 short pieces for legs and 4 corner joints.)

Now add a T shaped joint at the bottom of each leg to act as a foot and allow the shelf to stand.

Put them in your shelf one behind the other and stack half your shoes on top.

And here’s the same view from the “before” picture.  I’m happy to report it’s been more than a week and it still looks like that!