A Shoe-In Project

We got tired of seeing my shoes piled in a heap at the entrance door. So, some tidying-up was needed.

- Geoff Hollingdale

From the scrap pieces in the workshop wood stock, a shoe rack was designed. It is sufficiently robust so you can sit on the rack while you put on or take off your shoes.

There are many designs you can follow posted on the web but the design used was inspired by keeping it simple. This essentially simple design has its carcass made from 16mm veneered chip board with inner supports made from a standard cut size of PAR pine.

Step-by-step guide

Step 1: Prepare the Side Supports. Start by cutting the frame (the two side pieces and the top) from a piece of 16 mm veneered chipboard.

The diagram (Fig. 1) shows the dimensions I used. You could scale up and down, triple-deck depending on the number of pairs of shoes you need to store; mine was quite modest, the wife’s, well...

The top was to be ‘hidden’ dowelled to the side supports; the cross-support pieces dowelled to the side supports. 8mm dowels would be used.

Okay, so the top, and two side supports have been cut to size (I gave the ‘man’ in my local wood shop some lunch money as I don’t have a table or circular saw) and now I set-up the two side supports to cut the slots. This was done for both sides using a router and a simple jig to hold the two pieces and I used a scrap, straight piece of wood as a cutting guide. You need to do this as a series of passes to cut to the required depth (about 8mm) and the required width of the chipboard.