DIY Pallet Liquor Rack

This is a relatively easy project using a pallet that can produce two liquor racks with very little pallet disassembly, minimal cutting, and minor drilling. It may not fit all your bottles but a good, sturdy, wide pallet can hold a lot of them. The rack pictured is made from a 4ft wide pallet.

Parts

1. A pallet. Generally available for free. Most places recycle them so ask before you grab. Often, they’ll have a pile you can take from and another that you cannot. Otherwise, look up your local pallet recycler.
2. Approximately 12 deck screws per rack. It partially depends on how many studs your pallet has. There are 4 studs in the racks pictured above.

Steps

Pallets differ quite a bit so not all pallets may be optimal for this project. What you want to do is identify which side will be the back versus the front of your rack. Things to consider are the sizes and placement of the cross boards as well as the condition of the wood. With regard to the size, I wanted the smaller board to be the front of my rack to show as much of each bottle as possible.

Remove extra boards from what will be the front of your rack. Generally, you’ll want one board at the front, bottom of your rack and two in the back. If there aren’t any boards in the way, you’ll still need to remove at least one from elsewhere on the pallet—we’ll be using this as the bottom of the rack.

Next, cut the studs to separate your rack from the pallet. I like to use a reciprocating saw (or sawzall) and cut adjacent to what will be the upper cross board. Avoid cutting through any nails and wear eye protection.

Place the cross board you removed earlier over the bottom of the rack. This will support your bottles. It should already have holes where the nails were that line up well with the studs. If the pallet is asymmetrical, you might have to flip the board around to get the holes to line up. I recommend drilling through the holes into the studs and then screwing in at least two deck screws per stud.

Your rack is all but finished. You will probably want to sand it down and may want to varnish it. For this particular rack, I just sanded the rough edges and did not varnish it. I was worried about the green paint but, in the end, I think it went well with the final look.

To hang it, using two deck screws in each of the back cross boards into wall studs would be ideal. I recommend drilling and countersinking for the best strength. When loaded, your rack will be supporting a pretty heavy and delicate load.

Ideas for finishing touches:

• A bottle opener.
• A magnet to catch the caps that fall from your opener.
• A small hook for corkscrews and such.
• Some galvanized or black pipe attached by a floor flange makes a great hanger for a bar towel.
• An LED light strip to illuminate your bottles.