DIY Faux-Industrial Farmhouse Coffee Mug Rack

Ever have a project totally planned out and something pops up that makes you change tracks?

Yeah, that happened this month.

For a couple of weeks, I’ve been making plans and researching supply sources to make a DIY Industrial Farmhouse Blanket Ladder (which will be coming, I promise). I had it all sketched out, knew where I wanted to buy my materials, and was ready to hit those purchase buttons and get started.

But then I bought a new coffee maker.

I had been lusting over the Ninja Coffee Bar for almost a year. Multiple brew functions! A milk frother! The ability to brew single cups or carafes! I wanted it…bad. But I had a perfectly good Keurig and couldn’t justify the expense. And then my trusty Keurig stopped brewing properly (Some days it took three brew cycles to get a full cup…not a good way to start a caffeine addict’s day).

Bye-bye Keurig…hello Ninja Coffee Bar! (And yes, it’s just as awesome as I imagined it would be.)

And of course, after setting up this new caffeine delivery system, I needed a pretty coffee mug rack to display my pretty coffee mugs (Because, yes, I own more coffee mugs than one person actually needs…but they’re so cute!).

So that’s what I’ve been working on.

It should have been a relatively quick and easy project, until I tried a new text transfer method that looked simple but threw a wrench in my plans (Also, work has been a time-consuming pain this week).

Read on to see how I created my faux-industrial farmhouse coffee mug rack.

Supplies:

– Three 2.5” x 3’ pine project boards (cut in half to make six 2.5” x 18” boards)

– One 1.5” x  3’ pine project board (cut to make two 1.5” by 15” boards)

– One ½” aluminum flat bar

– Cup hooks

–  Furniture tacks

– 1” nails

–  2” wire cup brush

– Cordless drill

– Saw

– DAP Rapid Fuse glue

– MinWax White Wash Pickling

– Rustoleum Hammered Paint & Primer spray in Burnished Amber

–  Paint brush

– Dry cloth (for staining)

– Text image (always print mirrored)

– Water

– Acrylic paint

– Small paint brush

– Painter’s tape

Instructions

First things first, putting together the pallet board for this sign. Of course, you can buy a pallet sign at literally any craft store…but building one yourself is seriously so cheap and easy (the materials I used cost me about 10 bucks).  It’s also the best to get the sign the exact size you want it.

I found this tutorial to make new wood look old and distressed from MrDiyDork. Basically, it involves using a cordless drill and a wire cup brush to bring out the wood grain and create texture. It was super simple and I loved the results…definitely a technique I’ll be using again.

After distressing my boards, I stained them with MinWax White Wash Pickling stain. White wash gives the wood a bright finish without hiding the grain or wood texture so it looks almost like white paint that’s weathered (Obviously, the key to any DIY farmhouse décor is how to make new things look old). For this sign, I applied about 5 coats of stain to make it look super white. I left the stain to dry overnight before assembling the boards.

Assembling a pallet sign is crazy easy. I used the 1 ½” board as support backing and attached the 2 ½” boards for the front with DAP Rapid Fuse glue (I’ve tried several different types of wood and construction glue and nothing else holds up the way this stuff does). A few nails to secure everything in place and, voilà, I had a perfectly sized pallet sign.

Next up was the lettering…this is where I ran into a few problems. I had seen a tutorial online to transfer text onto wood using iron-on transfer sheets. It looked really simple and I already had a few of these sheets in my craft supplies. I used Adobe Illustrator to layout the text I wanted and print a mirror image onto the sheets (the fonts I chose were American Typewriter and Luxus Brut). Fail…major fail. My text ended up looking smudged (even after I taped the sheets down with a ton of painter’s tape to keep them in place) so I had to sand it off, restain, and try again. After a second fail, I went back to my old standby…using a print out to create an outline and fill it in with paint.

Tutorials for this process are everywhere and it’s method that’s always worked best for me (I’ve also tried using freezer paper and modge podge methods in the past). In a nutshell, you print out a mirror image of the text you want, secure it ink side down onto the wood surface, lightly dampen the paper, and use a smooth tool to burnish (or rub) to ink into the wood (most tutorials suggest using the end cap of a Sharpie but I don’t have any Shaspies lying around…the back of a spoon also works). If you’re successful, you’ll now have a light impression of your text on the wood to use as a guide for painting the letters. I’ve found that a tiny detail brush (because I don’t have the steadiest hands for painting) and slightly diluted acrylic paint work really well for this part. After the paint dried I went over it gently with sandpaper to give the text a more weathered look (because, again, the farmhouse look is all about making things look old).

The final part of my process was the hardware. I picked up some cheap silver cup hooks, furniture nails, and a ½” aluminum bar from Lowe’s. I really liked the idea of accenting the sign with hammered metal…but y’all, decorative hammered metal is pricey. So I cheated. 

I cut the aluminum bar down to size (really easy, all I had to do was partially saw through it and snap the rest off) and drilled holes where I wanted the furniture tacks (also easy, aluminum is a soft metal so this doesn’t require andyspecial drill bits). Then I painted the bar, the cup hooks, and the heads of the furniture tacks (popped the hooks and tacks through a piece of cardboard to keep the ends from getting gunked up with paint) with Rustoleum’s Hammered texture spray paint. Quick tip from my experience: apply the spray paint lightly. Heavier coats don’t get the same textured effect (I don’t know what kind of sorcery Rustoleum came up with that makes this paint get that hammered metal texture, but it’s awesome).

Once dry, I attached the bars with more Rapid Fuse glue and hammered in the furniture tacks. Attaching the cup hooks only required drilling holes (use a drill bit just a little smaller than the screw shaft) and screwing them into place.

I taped off the aluminum bars and touched up the paint where it had chipped off in a few places and my Faux-Industrial Farmhouse Coffee Mug rack was done!

Now I have a cute place to display a few of my favorite coffee mugs (and possibly an excuse to buy more).