Bathroom towel rack

[Cherryville Chuck]

A couple years ago wifey said to me "I want you to build a towel rack for the bathroom". Bless her heart, she shut up and left it at that. That left it up to me to figure out what. I had made a blanket rack for her mom years ago and I used bars instead of rods for it and liked that look so that covered that design part. I thought it would look better with a shelf top and would also allow a few knickknacks on it to dress the space up. It also needed two bars to make sure there was enough towel space. I also wanted to make sure I could hit two studs with the mounting screws for support. I don't trust wall anchors over a long period of time for something like this. The bathroom already has quite a bit of red cedar in it so I dug into my old growth clear cedar stash for material. This might be something someone else is interested in building so I'll include my measurements as a starting point. It's scalable up or down.

Dimensions
-The top is 9"/ 22.5 cm wide by 38.5"/ 97.8 cm long by 1"/ 2.54 cm thick.
-The sides are 8.5"/ 21.6 cm wide by 13 3/8"/ 34 cm long by 1 1/8"/ 29mm thick. An inch/25mm would have been enough. I laid out the ogee curves by tracing around something round, probably a 1L/ 1qt paint can
-The towel bars are 7/8"/ 22 mm thick by 2 3/4 (top) and 2 1/2 (bottom) (7 and 6.35cm) wide by 33 7/8"/ 86cm long. I don't remember if the difference in width was on purpose or an oops. The gussets at the corners of the upper bar did cover an oops. I cut the mortises to the lines for the full width of the bars instead of the lines for the mortises which showed with the bar in place. The gussets allowed me to move the bar a little higher and then hide the gap at the bottom. Like Harry used to say, it created a design opportunity.
-The back is 5/16 to 3/8" thick, 8-10 mm, by 7 7/8"/ 20 cm wide panel. I don't remember the length. I rabbeted the the sides for it to fit into and that provided racking resistance and well as helping with mounting support.
- I installed a ledger board under the top which is about 1/2"/ 12mm thick by 1 3/4"/ 4.5 cm wide. It's about 34" long which meant I could screw to 2 studs at 32" center to center. I included a close up photo of one end of the ledger board.

Cedar is a good choice for this piece. 5/4 decking cedar would be a good choice for material but it would be second growth and not old growth and it wouldn't be clears but still nice. For a finish I used teak oil which is basically a highly diluted varnish. The oil soaks in deep on cedar, gives it a little shine, and is really easy to refinish if it needs it. Wet towels have so far had no effect on it.

[Stick486]

WORD OF CAUTION...
really nice work like that begets more work...

[Herb Stoops]

I like it Chuck, clear cedar is a dream to work with. Nice clean lines ,good workmanship.
Herb

[Cherryville Chuck]

Thanks guys. Don't worry Stick, Myra always has some project in mind. Right now I'm trying to figure out a fix for the glider rocker I made her years ago. It was built from a plan from Viel Tools in Quebec and there were some things I didn't like about it so I modified it some. One thing I omitted was a bar that went across the base frame. Turns out it was needed to prevent the legs from over centering and allowing the chair to flop either all the way forward or back. It's sitting on my workbench for a week and I stare at it occasionally trying to figure out a fix that I won't mind looking at.

[Herb Stoops]

I have a bar stool doing the same thing, sitting awaiting a new rung to be installed and put back together. I laid the new rung beside it and told it to fix itself, but it didn't listen to me.
Herb

[Nickp]

Very nice...clean lines...!