Easy Peasy Key Rack

The last time my parents came down for a visit my dad walked into the house and said 'you guys need a key rack' A few days later The Husband's mom (aka my mother in law) came over and said 'you guys need a key rack'. True story. 

So we made a key rack. An easy peasy one. 

What you'll need:

- A Mirror or Picture Frame

- Painter's Tape (I used Frogtape because that's what we had laying around)

- Paint and Paint Brushes

- Hooks and Screws

- A Husband (or someone comfortable with operating a drill. I am not, so I used my husband for this step)

- A drill

We used the Malma mirror from Ikea for the back of the key rack. Our hooks are also from Ikea, I can't find them online though. 

To paint the diagonal stripes I used painter's tape. I just eyeballed the angle to be as close to 45 degrees as I could. I then taped over the whole mirror with diagonal tape, using full pieces to go all the way across the mirror and butting the next tape stripe right next the adjacent tape stripe so they could later be peeled off with out disturbing the tape that I wanted left on. I then peeled off every other piece of tape. Looking back I probably should have taken better pictures of this step. Sorry! Once you've peeled off every other stripe your mirror should look like this:

I bought Martha Stewart craft paint for this project. I picked Beach Glass (aqua), Deep Sea (navy), Pollen (yellow), and Chipotle (red). Once I had the stripes painted on I didn't like how the chipotle worked with the rest of the colors so I switched it out for Benjamin Moore's Adobe Orange. I had that paint on hand already so it was a quick fix. 

Tip: Before painting use a credit card (or something similar) to press down the edges of the tape to make sure it seals really good so you don't get any seepage. I went over each piece of tape a few times pressing fairly hard to make sure the tape was good and stuck. 

As soon as I was done painting and I had enough coats on (I let the paint dry to the touch in between coats) to get the coverage I wanted I peeled the tape off. 

The husband then attached the hooks along the bottom. He used 1/2" screws (the hooks we got from Ikea didn't come with screws) to attach the hooks to the bottom of the mirror. He measured and spaced the hooks out evenly (which, with the Malma mirror was about 2" apart) and then drilled a hole for each hook and then screwed the hooks in with a screwdriver. This took him maybe 10 mins. 

The Malma has a predrilled hole on the back for hanging but because we are going to hang keys on it we needed to two holes, or hangers (which is what we used) on the back. Otherwise when you go to hang one set of keys the whole rack will tilt. That's not really what we wanted. So The Husband attached two picture hanger hooks to the top two corners of the back of the mirror so we could safely and securely attach it to the wall. 

The hangers we used on the back of the mirror (we only used two though)

And that's all there is to it.

How Easy Peasy was that?!